


The Hollow Men

by Gabri



Series: The Sky in a Cage [3]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies), Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Abuse, Asphyxiation, Brainwashing, Confinement, Dark!Jack, Fearling Jack, M/M, Rape, Slavery, Stockholm Syndrome, Unreliable Narrator, Violence, fearling Hiccup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-19
Updated: 2014-08-19
Packaged: 2018-02-13 18:38:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2160897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gabri/pseuds/Gabri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I love you." Jack promised, and pushed him to his knees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hollow Men

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr at chiwandering has a whole ugly tag and art about this screwy series should you desire more ugh. I'm extremely paranoid about trigger warning this thing so **heaDS UP** this whole series is super dark, please be prepared and read the warnings! This one's for Bubbles/berktoburgess, who was incredibly helpful in ironing out details for part three while letting me role-play/test drive Fearling Hiccup out on their own Dragon Lord Hiccup.
> 
> Again, make sure you've read the past installments, The Sky in a Cage and The Canary before this one, at the very least so you know what level of fucked up to expect. Rape and violence are the blanket warnings but there's certainly more to it than that, so be careful. Hiccup is an unreliable narrator so yes/no lines are very blurred and certainly not to be trusted from his perspective. 
> 
> Jack, Hiccup, and Toothless are all fearlings -- this takes place not too long after The Canary's end.
> 
> Thank you thank you to those who encouraged and left feedback for this thing, it's been really awesome and I can't tell you how much I appreciate the comments!! aaaand, final note. Apologies for the wait. It's an exhausting project to update despite how invested I am in the fearling disasters. 
> 
> Thank you ;;v;;

_This is the dead land_  
This is cactus land  
Here the stone images  
Are raised, here they receive  
The supplication of a dead man's hand  
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this  
In death's other kingdom  
Waking alone  
At the hour when we are  
Trembling with tenderness  
Lips that would kiss  
Form prayers to broken stone.

_-T.S. Elliot, The Hollow Men_

\---------

Time was an amorphous thing in the Nightmare Realm, sliding and dripping like sand between his fingers. Were it not for the fading violet-blue of bruises to measure between the thralls of sleep, Hiccup would have not even paid the passing of hours a second thought.

But there was more to judge with now than just the ebbing bite of nails left branded into his skin, more than even the healing marks of a dragon's talons against his master's pale body. Hiccup had watched them go from hard, angry splotches of color to silky white scars and finally to nothing at all, the once-bleeding lines seamlessly erased upon an expanse of glassy skin. Jack had been the only factor of marking time by before. Now that Hiccup was free to explore, the lair of the Nightmare King was a land so incredibly _vast_ that he found himself staggering to comprehend the enormity of it, let alone the hints of history lying within. Even the places where he had been led, taken pace-by-pace with the nearby snorting of a restless Toothless by his side, had been an endless labyrinth that twisted and turned as far as the eye could see. Of all the pathways that lay tauntingly before them, Jack would choose just one, and Hiccup would stumble along after, clinging tight to his arm for fear of being lost.

(Although it wasn't _fear_ that touched him, per se. There was nothing like fear when Hiccup felt the heat of his dragon's breath close over his shoulder, and nothing like being lost when Toothless' heartbeat was tucked away and beating strong within his center like the point of a dagger sunken into a faded map.)

Jack showed him a room of crumbling pillars and a winding staircase that seemed to crawl up the walls and over the ceiling. He caught the murky corner of a still pool of water whose depth he could not begin to guess at, a fallen fixture that looked as if it might hold the rotting spines of ancient books, and a cavern embedded with crystal that shone with eerie light through the gloom.

One night, when Toothless was in yet another deep, deep slumber, Jack took him even further.

He was a quick and nimble creature, while Hiccup was weak for balance and favored his right side more readily then the left. But Jack knew the twists and turns of the Nightmare Realm with an ease that was second nature. He ducked to miss stalactites without sparing them a judging glance, hopping over still pools of water as if picking his way through invisible stepping stones upon the air. Hiccup tried his best to keep pace and trusted Jack to keep him upright when he began to trip. It was in equal parts a lack of coordination as it was surprise; he wasn't practiced with navigating spaces this large.

_(--ten paces of steel beneath his feet; enough to lay down without touching the sides--)_

With Jack's hand clamped around his wrist like a manacle, he could already feel the swell of an ocean within him, the one that yearned for the way Jack smiled at him and soaked up every blissful drop of praise. Whatever the Fearling Prince was planning, it was enough to leave him bouncing on the balls of his feet, and in no time Hiccup found himself aching for it too. Burning for it, even. Restless and tangled and stumbling through the maze of the Nightmare Realm, tugged roughly by Jack's bruising hand and _wanting_ whatever it was just as badly as Jack wanted to bestow it. At last they reached a flat wall of rock that Jack seemed to recognize with giddy enthusiasm, running his hand over the smooth surface once before whirling to face Hiccup. His blue, blue gaze was wide with excitement, the only bit of color in their monochrome world.

"Close your eyes," he ordered eagerly.

Hiccup did as he was told. A moment later a chilly hand curved over the back of his knees, another bracing itself at his back, and he was lifted with a surprised squawk right off the ground.

"Hey now, relax! I got you...." He could feel Jack's heart thumping away beneath his skin. The sickly, drugged beat of it came at odds with the rush of mania that surged through his wiry body. "And don't open them 'till I say or you'll ruin the surprise."

There was a rush of wind and the squeezing pressure of traveling through the dark. Hiccup's ears were ringing, dizzy from the blind teleportation, when a wall of stormy heat impacted him in unexpected force. He breathed in unfamiliar air, heavy with moisture and thick enough to choke on. There was salt within it -- ocean air, maybe. Pine...

The urge to peek sent a flicker of apprehension through his lax expression.

Jack noticed. The cool pad of his thumb stroked roughly over the back of a bare, freckled knee. "You looked real good in a blindfold..." he recalled teasingly.

Hiccup squeezed his eyes more tightly shut.

"Good boy." A kiss, just below his left eye. His insides tangled in a warm flutter of papery wings at the gesture. "You ready?"

"Ready." Hiccup mumbled.

There was a tipping in altitude. Hiccup clung tight with his hands as his flesh foot slipped and collided against something solid. The prosthetic connected a moment later, and soon they were both steady on a rough surface, drier than the cavernous ruin of underground and imbued with a unusual heat. Jack fixed his hands over Hiccup's eyes and said, "Open!"

Hiccup did. The net of his fingers appeared blue-gray in the minimal light, and peeking through his knuckles was something large and gleaming....

Then his hands dropped away and Hiccup was reeling back against him, thinking _what?_ and _where?_ and _gods, oh gods_ all at once.

In the sky -- in the _sky_ , because that's what it had to be, the sky from Above -- and he had never seen a black sky like this before, only dreamt of it-- there was a light pinned high up above him unlike one he could ever remember witnessing. His brain supplied the word ' _moon_ ' just seconds before Jack hummed the name under his breath. It was _dazzling_ , almost too large to fit within the shocked circles of his gawking eyes. The shadow he was cloaked in felt weak in the light of it, almost translucent, as if that silvery face from Above was slowly peeling layers from his very skin.

Jack watched his reaction excitedly, eyes wide and darting with greedy glee over Hiccup's stunned face. He couldn't manage a word in return, only a a tiny, hushed sigh. His eyes were beginning to sting already. A reluctant blink supplied him with aftershocks, blue-black circles that popped and fizzled in a bizarre, careless dance behind his eyelids. Automatically, he raised a hand to try to rub them away.

"What's...." he started uselessly. "....I.... _Jack_....!"

"For your first real taste of what it's like above," Jack supplied with relish. "Got you a front row seat and everything. You're welcome~" he added with a good-natured cackle. "It's good, right?....do you like it? ...your mouth's hanging open, you know." he finished affectionately, flicking a finger over his lower lip with an amused snuffle. Hiccup hurriedly closed it.

"S-sorry--"

"It's all right." His voice dropped a notch, husky, and Hiccup felt quite suddenly as if he was on his back again, as if Jack was prising his legs apart to settle deep into his nook between them, and the moonlight was just another shade to vivisect him lovingly beneath as he drank up every gasp and moan. "It's a lot to take in at once, isn't it?"

His voice had a strength to it despite its wispy rasp, winding around in Hiccup's brain like a plume of thick black smoke.

"I can take it." Hiccup murmured intently through the haze, and Jack swelled with pride and rubbed a loose oval against his hip, fingers stretching to skitter along his belly like a spider.

"Are you _hungry?_ " he purred.

The question halted to a stop in his brain, utterly nonsensical and completely unexpected. Hiccup tried to let it unfold itself there, develop into something that could be reshaped with proper meaning on his tongue. But despite the hollowness of it, he didn't feel spurned by the confusion, either. And the answer to Jack's questions was usually the same. So Hiccup said, "Yes."

" _Good._ " Jack beamed. "Cause Pitch and I are gonna fill you right up, don't you worry your pretty little head. I can't _wait._ " The hand on his belly flattened, rubbing in wide, lazy circles that left his midsection feeling cold and strangely empty. "And I've waited a long time, you know?" he added in an undertone.

He had no idea. But Jack seemed to be waiting for an answer, so he nodded and nodded, eager to supply. The Fearling Prince's smile splintered from ear to ear.

For a moment they just stood there, Jack's hand lazily pressed to his stomach, Hiccup with his arms still at his sides. He could sense the proud, defiant way his master was grinning back up at the moon, as if Hiccup were a gem on his finger that the distant stars could only hope they could touch.

"...he really likes you, by the way..."

_...he?_

The sentence was offered up like a long-awaited gift, wrapped up and tied with a bow. Hiccup got the impression it was something he had been waiting to say, something he was supposed to be overjoyed with it. Jack's pride was nearly tangible, so he quirked his mouth and tried to soak it in. It started slow, just a tiny bubble of happiness within his chest, but Jack urged him on with bright eyes and stroking hands until it swelled and shone fit to pop. "He just never got to see you the right way before. You're tiny, Hic, but _wow_ , do you pack a lot of punch. It's kind of hard to believe sometimes." The Prince clicked his tongue, staring off into the space behind his right ear as if drawing on a distant memory. "...but he believes it now. _Hah_ , I just knew he'd love you! You're really, _really_ hard not to love!"

The bubble inside him wavered, caught by an unfamiliar wind. "....as....as in..."

"Pitch. Come on. You know Pitch! Tall guy? Lots of teeth?"

"Oh." Hiccup said. And then once more; "Yes."

"And you wanna make him happy, right?"

There was something stirring inside him, beneath the ever-surging tide of joy that came with bringing that grin to Jack's face, beyond the compulsion to agree that clouded his brain and lifted his heart and threaded his body with the calm of safety.

Hiccup thought of lying on his back with his left foot missing, and Pitch's fingers debating the worth of the right.

"Yes." he whispered again.

"And we'll take care of you when you're up here." A nuzzle against his cheek; Hiccup savored it with a happy sigh until Jack's icy skin left his once more. "You're safe. You're _ours._ "

 _Ours, ours, ours._ It resonated in his head endlessly, as if the words had been screamed into the caverns of the Nightmare Realm, tangled it up in fierce and ringing echoes rather than whispered it with intimate care into the shell of his ear. It took a few sleeps to deduce for himself why the word left him unsettled, but he came to the right conclusion soon enough.

For years, he knew the tone, the husky lilt and hungry bite, he knew the elation of being folded up and blessed with kisses and tucked into the arms of someone who loved him. He knew the exact _inflection_ of the Fearling Prince's gifted words, like a promise he'd rather die than break -- he'd heard it a thousand times after all, both waking and sleeping and everywhere in between.

But it wasn't until that night that the phrasing changed, and Jack choose to say 'ours' instead of 'mine.'

\--------

The dream that took him that night was one of his reoccurring visitors.

Hiccup was laying on a bed of ash, with something thick and slippery dragging repeatedly over one side of his face and through his hair until it stuck up on end. There were tongs of fire in the distance trying their best to creep closer, but every time one tried to lunge forward and set him aflame, a growl from behind him sent them skittering back again.

As he woke, the false details fell away slowly -- the crumbling earth, the blinking faces of red -- leaving only the slimy coat that remained cooling on his cheek. Hiccup turned towards the direction it came from, bewildered, and found the next drag of damp muscle painting a messy stripe straight up from his chin to his forehead.

" _Euagh...!_ "

A _rumble_ snickered back at him -- not a growl, he thought dazedly, but a cooing purr that snatched away the last lingering fragments of the nightmare from his sleepy mind. Hiccup spat the bitter taste from his mouth and threw his hands in exacerbation against a warm and decidedly larger body. His skin met smooth, dry scales that hitched with delight.

"Can you _not?_ " Hiccup hissed into the dark. The words came out slurred, thoughtless, and were met with another playful lick. " _Toothless!_ "

More rumbling. And a weaker hitch in his own chest - a _human_ rumble. Laughter. His own. Hiccup grinned, nuzzling himself closer to his friend as the details of his own world came easing back into reality -- cool stone with traces of dust beneath him. Certainly no layer of volcanic ash, no. A leathery wing folded around - yes, yes, this he knew. And a few blinking lanterns of yellow in the distance...the eyes of curious fearlings.

...they _were_ making quite a bit of noise.

 _Sorry_ , he thought automatically, rubbing the dragon's sticky saliva out of his eyes before it began to sting. "Right, yeah, okay, I'm up. I'm _up_ , buddy..."

He could make out Toothless's streamlined shape more as he blinked himself awake. A great wide head, tipped in amusement, turned to face him. Nubs of white lay evenly within his jaw, curving inward to subtle points and aligned in two grinning rows. His eyes were the most noticeable, enormous as they were, their glow serving to rouse him more steadily awake. They were gold and shining as if blown from glass, with a beautiful undertone of acid green beneath. Hiccup could just make out the blearily outline of his own damp, untidy head within the mirrors of dilated pupils.

It took a moment of squinting at his reflection to realize the image was upside down, and another to take full inventory of their position. He was on his back, fitted parallel to Toothless's side, one leg kicked out in the throes of dreaming and the other enveloped in blackness from the knee down. He could feel the slightest tingle of pins and needles already pricking up through his thigh.

For a long moment he just stared at the stump, entranced by the bloodless _nothingness_ of how it ended....and then Toothless purred at him curiously again, adjusted his weight, and there beneath the dragon's paw was a metal prosthetic.

Hiccup let his head fall back and thought; _of course._

He was wide awake, now.

But waking in the Nightmare Realm was always a disorientating experience.

They were resting on a crop of rock just outside one of the towering colosseum formations that Jack called _'hives.'_ They were naturally formed houses of sorts, and the favorite resting places of Nightmares and fearling wisps. From his perch outside, Hiccup had a clear view of the open expanse of the Nightmare Realm -- or as clear as the shadows would allow. There was an illusionary charm to the flatness of the walls, a lack of depth that made their distance impossible to guess.

There were cages above his head, ancient and jagged silhouettes that stretched as far as the eye could see. Hiccup counted the suspended fixtures the same way Jack talked of counting sheep: deliberately at first, then dreamily and without a thought. Here in a corner were the three smallest fixtures. There in the distance was the one with its door always left hanging open. Some seemed to be lined with perches, as if sculpted for the tiny feet of birds: twenty seven, if it wasn't a trick of the eyes. It was very hard to tell, sometimes, when you were looking up into the darkness. And besides, the shadows liked to shift.

There were ten still wet with melting ice, three half-blocked by an inky wing, and only one with the bars twisted and melted, hanging from a worn and fire-blackened chain like a rotting corpse ready to plummet from its hook.

The black sheep of cages. Or the Canary's cage, as Jack sometimes called it. Hiccup watched that one the longest, tracing the scorched metal with a far-away eye until Toothless' nudging and licking could be ignored no longer. He pushed himself unsteadily to his feet, holding his friend's side for balance.

Cold in the air....

Jack was nearby. It wasn't just the temperature -- he knew it by the faint tug at his center, the way Toothless' eyes took to squinting. They walked a few paces, Hiccup with his hand resting behind the Night Fury's ears, the red of his tail fin waving behind them like a bloody banner...and sure enough, a skip of glacial fingers ticked over his spine the moment they passed one of the open tunnels of the great hive. Hiccup's startled gasp was quickly swallowed up by the sounds of the Fearling Prince's laughter.

"Just in time!" he preened, reaching for him greedily with one hand. The other was tucked behind his back, curled tight around the length of a frost-covered staff. "We're going--"

"-- _going?_ "

"--don't worry! You'll like it! And don't mention the moon either, okay? That was our little secret." The hand fixed itself around his upper arm and began to pull. Hiccup stumbled to keep beside him, Toothless quick at his side, when Jack stopped to spare him an apologetic grimace. "---whoa-a-a there, and you can't bring the big guy. I love 'em too, but it's supposed just us tonight, you know?"

"Where are we going?" Hiccup started again, anxiously.

"I thought you were hungry." Jack quipped back, lofting a brow.

There was no proper reply to that. Hiccup stalled, wavering on mismatched feet, before turning regretfully to the gold-bright eyes of his best friend.

...they weren't _always_ together, really. And Toothless slept a lot anyway. It had worried him at first, but as Jack had reasoned with him that since he was a large creature, he would need to sleep larger too. Toothless was new, and unused to anything but Hiccup. For one reason or another, it made him uneasy to turn his back on the darkling dragon, as if maybe he'd circle around fully only to find nothing left to retrieve.

Hiccup stroked his hands over Toothless' head, traced the patterns of scales beneath his throat that he knew as well as a second skin, and smiled back into the lantern lights of beautiful, intelligent eyes.

"I'll see you soon." Their gaze held until the dragon's tense form began to relax. Hiccup pressed their foreheads together consolingly. Pecked an innocent kiss to his snout. And then he was being whisked away with Jack's eager excitement pulsing like a second heartbeat within his head, and there was nothing more to say.

Stalactites. Tiny ponds. A sense of deja vu occurred to him-- he thought knew this path, despite the trickster charm of the Nightmare Realm. Or maybe it was the sense of joy that made him recall a similar night, hurrying along by the same person with the same intentions. Soon they approached a wall of rock, purposeful in its set place. And standing in front of it...

_/Oh./_

He was whipped around a moment later, so that the waiting vision was mostly obscured by Jack's dazzling face. The Fearling Prince licked his thumb, diving in to rub a stray spot of dust from Hiccup's cheek. He stroked his hands down over the charcoal mop of hair, flattening a few stray locks that Toothless had cemented at odd angles.

In the distance by the wall, that great black shape continued to pluck chords in his heart. He could feel the phantom memory of fingers on his pulse, counting the beats....

Then Jack took him by the shoulders and steered him boldly forward, step by excitable step until Hiccup was inches away from the Nightmare King's waiting figure.

He didn't need to look up to know how steadily Pitch was watching him.

Hiccup stared hard at the grainy texture of his skin, the way the shadow on him seemed to lay unbreathing. The deja vu was stronger now, with Jack's voice echoing alongside; _ours, ours, ours._ He wondered distantly if he was supposed to lift his eyes or lower them, but the only thing that seemed tangible in his head was the tightness of Jack's hands at his shoulders, holding him proud and steady like a sacrificial offering.

"He's _good_ , isn't he?" he prompted smugly when Pitch didn't comment. There was a vicious brand of victory in his eyes, reveling in the long-awaited look that must have held clear in the Nightmare King's gaze. "Didn't I tell you?"

Pitch took a lock of hair between his thumb and forefinger and stroked it thoughtfully. Hiccup felt his hand connect, a caress of the back of his knuckles along a bloodless cheek.

His heart pounded thickly in his throat, weighing down his tongue like a stone.

"He's very good." Pitch conceded at last, quietly.

"You wanna fuck him?" Jack leaned forward on his toes. "I can get him all ready for you--"

"We have a feast to attend, remember."

"Come on, it'll be fun! Just a quickie. He can take it! Hey, Hiccup - you can take it, right?"

...he knew he could. Of course he could. It was just so very difficult to speak with that stone weighing down his tongue.

"...Hiccup?"

"Yeah." he managed at last, and was relieved to hear the sound of his voice held no hint of trembling. "Yeah -- sure." Sure he could. Jack would love him to. Hiccup would _love_ to. Where? When? Was he supposed to get on his back right now? Pitch wasn't saying anything, but Jack's hands were ticking along his spine, lower and lower, and the shadows draped on him suddenly felt as flimsy and loose a covering as air.

Pitch's hand was very still against his cheek. And then it parted, closing to fit instead around his wrist. There was no bite of broken nails against his skin; this touch was firm, unconcerned with escape.

"Close your eyes." Jack crooned again.

Hiccup closed his eyes and thought, _here goes._

He couldn't remember his first time with Jack. It was funny, he had never really considered there to have been a first time at all. There was just _Jack_ , sweet and beautiful and icy cold around him, and then Hiccup, so happy and greedy and overwhelmed with getting him in deep...

When was that? He recalled not too long ago -- a week? A month? -- laying on his back and savoring every inch....but it couldn't have been the first time, of course not...it was just that Jack was always there, for as far back as he could remember...

Well. It didn't matter. It wasn't as if the first time could have been all _that_ different. It was just that if he could recall it, he could compare. Like...was his stomach supposed to be twisting? What did Pitch _like_ , anyway? Did he like the things that Jack liked? Shouldn't they be laying down, at least? It seemed an awful lot of effort to stand up as they were. And Pitch was tall, taller than him by a long shot. They used to -- Jack, that was -- they used to....against the wall of his cage....and Hiccup had just held on the bars. But it had taken a lot of strength to hold himself off the ground like that, and he wasn't strong like Jack was. Jack had supported him, mostly. And when he hadn't, he had just watched his knuckles go white with the effort to support himself. And he -- yeah, that was fine, too, but...there were no bars here, so....

So, what? Just the wall? He could do that...or maybe he was _supposed_ to lay down? Hiccup couldn't see -- how long should his eyes stay closed? Maybe he'd get a blindfold...

.......

...a blindfold would be nice...

He felt so hollow, alone save that steely hand on his wrist and Jack's excitement coursing through him. No tug at his center from the Nightmare King, just a buzz in his brain. A _drone._ A rushing feeling joined the mix, as if the ground underneath him was moving. Hiccup thought suddenly of aftershocks behind his eyelids, the moon's phantom shape popping up in the darkness, and tried to recall exactly what shapes had been hiding inside its silver-white face.

Moisture in the air...heat...

"Open up."

Hiccup blinked back to life. And sure enough by that change in atmosphere, they were no longer in the Nightmare Realm.

They weren't even under the _moon._

They were in another room, this one cramped and saturated with color. Wooden walls. Unlit candles. This had to be Above, because Hiccup had never seen anything like it. Brown and gold slept within the pine-scented walls, lending a warm, reddish hue to his surroundings. Supporting beams stood close and cozy, sculpted into interesting shapes as if by human hands. There were discs of metal on the wall, the points of large and well-polished knives. Hiccup saw one with a handle smelted to look like a dragon's face, its eye painted red like a fallen drop of blood.

In the very center of the room was a bed, with a heavy axe resting and readied against the frame. And above that -- the only source of light for as far as the eye could see -- a halo of gold danced, arranged shapelessly above the headboard like a glittering thought bubble. It wasn't so radiant as the moon, but it came with a light of it's own, casting a cozy yellow glow over nearby surfaces.

The texture was familiar: sand. But not Pitch's sand, which was dark and speckled with grains of violet and emerald. It didn't even _move_ like Pitch's sand, that wispy and curling wind of skeleton fingers....this was like water, swelling and breathing gulps of fresh air. The shapes were sluggish, at first. Movements of a tide. Crescent of a stranger's smile. The pointed wing of a dragon. Hiccup watched one wing split into two, and a bird-like body form slowly in between. Its crest looked like a crown of broken needles. _Nadder_ , Hiccup thought randomly. _Deadly Nadder._ He couldn't take his eyes away.

Beside him, Jack ducked into the shadows. Not a second passed before Hiccup saw the whites of his eyes blink to life on the opposite side of the room, hidden within a murky corner where the golden glow failed to touch. He was only faintly visible, mostly given away by the excited bouncing on the balls of his feet, but the shadows about him twitched and stretched in stripes, arranging themselves in a spidery claim over the room as they unfurled like a dozen reaching hands.

The Fearling Prince crept forward, gripping his staff loosely, and bent to peek past the sparkling sand and into the bed itself. A toothy smile lit his face. He gestured, and Hiccup felt Pitch's hand fit itself into the small of his back and push.

It was all so thoughtless. His bare feet on the wooden floors made no sound at all. And when at last he reached Jack at the side of the bed, he noticed for the first time a human figure sleeping within it.

It was a woman. She was resting on her side, one hand loosely balled in woolen sheets. Strong, lithe...as tall as Jack, even. She must have been at least twenty years old. Her hair was a paler shade of the sand that shifted above her, and her skin was bright and pink. Pink in her cheeks, at her throat, full and pretty in the rosebud of her mouth. Hiccup had never seen so much _color_ in a person before. It was as if she were lit from the inside, a creature made of embers that glimmered even in slumber.

Jack was watching him now. Hiccup couldn't see his face, but he could feel the quietness within him, as if he were waiting for something very important to happen. Hiccup stared down at the stranger in her bed, her round moon face, the oval eyes, and wondered what color they were when they were open.

"Does she worry you?" Pitch asked softly.

"Not exactly." His voice sounded miles and miles away.

"And what does that mean? Not exactly?"

"It means...it means, no..."

The Nightmare King considered this for a long moment. The woman was motionless save for the faintest flicker of her eyes darting about beneath the lids, watching dreams unfold. There was a texture to her, a layer of dirt and sweat that highlighted her face like rouge. Jack's skin was smooth all over, glassy, but this woman looked like she'd feel rough beneath his fingers.

Hiccup wanted suddenly to reach out touch her.

The Nightmare King's hand moved up over his back and cupped the nape of his neck. "Are you hungry?" he breathed.

Hiccup flinched. He couldn't help it. The tone was impossible to read, and a frightful glance at the Nightmare King's face betrayed nothing.

_Hungry...._

The word had a deeper meaning, he knew it did. He just wasn't sure what that meaning _was_. Jack was always happy with a _yes_ , but Hiccup was practiced with Jack. Pitch was a mystery to him. There was a motive behind his questions, and risk in saying the wrong thing. Shamefully, he knew that although Jack insisted it was there, the Nightmare King's _like_ for him was a dull, decaying thing, and he had done so little to invest in it before. He felt blind before him, shuffling about in total darkness as surely as if Jack had sealed shadow over his eyes.

He didn't realize he was holding his breath again until Pitch spoke once more, just a touch softer and with a fondness that made his chest tighten. "It's not a trick question, pet."

 _I don't know_ , Hiccup thought, but his head tipped in assent despite himself. It was an instinctual nod, but the saliva beginning gather beneath his tongue suggested it was the correct answer even if his brain was to useless to explain why.

"Yes or no?" Pitch prompted politely.

 _Please,_ Hiccup thought, _**please--**_

But you didn't say ' _please'_ to the Nightmare King. Hiccup wet his lips anxiously. Took a breath. Tried again. Pitch was patient, watching him all the while.

Finally, it came, small and flat but thankfully lacking the stammer; "Yes."

"Yes, what?"

The golden sand above the woman's head shifted. Now there was a human shape on the Nadder's back, and braided hair that fanned in imaginary winds.

"Yes, I'm hungry." Hiccup whispered obediently through numb lips.

She was dreaming of flight. It was exactly as Hiccup had imagined it would be. The Nightmare Realm was wide, and Toothless could fly short distances within it, so Hiccup rode on his back sometimes, clutching very tightly for fear of falling. The disconnection with the ground made his stomach twist, which in turn only upset Toothless, and so usually he walked instead. But for the dreaming stranger, this disconnection was totally fearless. The woman's mouth was curving unknowingly into a smile as her dream of Nadder's wings stretched to full mast, balancing serenely in the spaces above her head. The tiny golden replica on its back stretched her hands out in delight, reaching for...

...clouds. Yes. Hiccup imagined her fingers were dipping into the bellies of passing clouds.

Something within him stirred at the thought.

Pitch's hand plucked his wrist up and lifted it, guiding, guiding, until his outstretched fingers were hovering just before the dreamsand pair. The sandy dragon was larger, but the shape of the woman he thought he could fit within the palm of his hand. It was as if time was frozen, so close and yet so far....and then Pitch's grip urged his hand forward, so that the very tip of his finger touched her golden heart.

A gasp broke through the air. Not Hiccup's voice -- the woman's. The _real_ woman, asleep in her bed. The peaceful curve of her smile became a grimace, and suddenly the sandy shape of the dragon was dissolving, crumbling away like falling dust as the dreamsand vision of her stood suspended for a moment, shock-still.

A stain of blackness spread from the fixed point where Hiccup's finger had connected. It swallowed her dream like a sickness-- torso, arms, legs, the pretty sweep of her plaited hair -- until the golden glow was rotted completely, leaving only a trembling human-shaped mass of nightmare sand beneath his touch. A taste of fear filled his throat, sickly sweet. Copper, earth, sticky drops of fresh honey. _More._ Hiccup pressed the knuckles of his free hand hurriedly between his lips. She was looking around, the figure of nightmare sand...terror made her movements stiff, unnatural...and then a black line appeared abruptly, sticking out from her shoulder blades --

_An arrow...?_

Lightening-fast another struck, directly above the first. He could almost hear the meaty _thwack_ in his head. Fear bubbled from the first impact, and flooded him by the second. Beneath her nightmare, the blonde woman made a weak sound of alarm and clutched her blankets tighter.

A new noise swelled upon the air, a groan -- not the woman's voice this time, but his own. His stomach was twisting, jaw tilted as he sipped uselessly at the air...somehow he could almost _feel_ it, the weight of terror in his mouth....a flavor...

...a _good_ flavor....

"What's he doing?" Jack interrupted sharply, eyes bright with excitement.

"Oral fixation." Pitch supplied. Hiccup could feel his amber gaze fixed upon him as steadily as ever. The fingers on his neck shifted lazily, toying with the shorter hairs at his nape. "An understandable line to blur, for a young fearling.....you remember feeding with your mouth." he added to Hiccup in a velvet aside.

Humiliation flooded him suddenly -- was he doing something wrong? -- but then a third arrow struck the nightmare sand, square in the woman's chest, and the sudden burst of fear that filled him washed over the shame. Hiccup gulped uselessly, swallowed only empty air, _whined--_

" _Wow..._ " Jack breathed out, smiling.

"It will pass."

"I dunno...." The Prince adjusted his weight, cheek pressed to his staff dreamily as he took in the display. "I kinda like it. It's cute."

Her eyes were moving very fast behind the closed lids, brows contorted as she struggled through the vision in her head. Pitch's grip pulled him back out of reach of the nightmare just as the strong lines began to go falter....weakening? Waking? The catch of Hiccup's breath was audible - _no_ , he thought, and _please--_ with an entirely different inflection than before. _Gone_ , so _soon_ , and he still wanted _more --_

"Easy." Pitch whispered to him. "Slowly."

Okay... _okay_....he could do this. Yes. _Easy._ Hiccup closed his eyes, willing his frantic heart to calm.

For a long moment there was only darkness, the drone of Pitch's silent approval, and that overwhelmingly addictive taste of the blonde woman's fear.

When he opened them again, they were outside of her room.

Blue-black darkness cloaked the air, lit in places by the silver light of the moon. Not a drop of nightmare sand had followed them out. _Did she wake up?,_ Hiccup wondered suddenly. His head was spinning. A ripple passed through him, realization -- they hadn't stayed to see what color her eyes were.

...it....

...it wasn't important.

There was a fullness inside him now, one he'd never felt before. Hiccup was aware quite suddenly that his fingers had found their way into his mouth -- he must have done it when he had tasted her nightmare. A knuckle was fitted beneath his teeth, sore from...chewing? Sucking? They came back wet when he tugged them free again.

Jack was watching him very closely.

"What _was_ that?" Hiccup rasped before he could stop himself, and colored quickly at the volume of his own voice. He turned to the moon, wetting his lips as the silence stretched on.

"Fresh fear." Jack supplied, his sights lingering still on the glossy sheen of Hiccup's mouth. "Not bad for your first meal, huh?"

'Not bad' couldn't even begin to cover it. Hiccup pressed his fingers back to his mouth, as if trying to keep that rare and delectable taste from spilling back out. Yellow hair washed in running water, honey-sweet milk, the rusted tip of an arrowhead between his teeth---

It circled back to him at once -- _your first meal_ \-- and suddenly the world of Above seemed just as impossibly large as the Nightmare Realm itself.

"There's _more?_ " he whispered thickly around his fingers.

Jack raised his eyebrows at Pitch and grinned.

Hiccup could hardly believe it. It was almost beyond comprehension, that such a place had existed for so long. That this ability to feel _full_ had existed for so long, suspended in the unknown beyond his tiny cage. Memories of Jack returning home with Pitch at his side, staff in hand, and a horde of accompanying Nightmares surfaced fresh in his brain. Their sense of renewed energy, of _satisfaction_ , suddenly made sense.

Jack was right, he realized.

It was a lot to take in.

Above was a sturdy place, misted in sea-spray and wide open to the portrait of the night sky. There were hills rather than staircases, houses rather than hives. Some of them were in states of mid-construction while others appeared gloriously new. Here and there he caught the tail ends of shimmering trails of sand, vanishing around corners like trails of golden breadcrumbs. Where the moon and stars cast light, Hiccup could see rainbows of color sleeping within the town: there was the green of the grass, blue undertones in the sky, the sea. Orange and yellow pulsing warm in the wooden huts. And red, shades upon shades of it, from bright cherry paint to bloody scarlet banners, to the smoldering embers of Hiccup's more familiar dreams.

In the distance were the milky heads of tired sheep, and wells that still held water. He could see dozens of stables, close together. Hiccup could even make out the outline of a few familiar shapes, hunched backs, and folded wings.

"It's a buffet!," Jack was saying, looking between Pitch and Hiccup eagerly. "Wait till you scare the twins, Hic, now _that's_ a trip. Dinner and Desert!"

"One is enough." Pitch interrupted silkily. "For tonight." They walked in the dark corners, and where their feet fell, the shadows only thickened. Pitch was a phantom in Hiccup's field of vision, but Jack he could see before him clearly. He moved like a predator, hands readied and comfortable around his staff, a natural grace to his hunter's steps.

They must have been just outside the woman's house, then. Maybe she hadn't woken up after all, because as far as his masters were concerned, there was no need to watch the doorway for any sign of her. Hiccup tore his eyes from the frame reluctantly and focused instead over the stable closest to him, where a larger shape was sleeping fretfully.

Jack caught the twitch of an elegant wing went still. Hiccup felt an order strum within his core -- _wait._

And for a minute's time they did nothing _but_ wait. The sleeping dragon pawed at the ground and lifted its head sightlessly. A crooning whine came from her throat, low and deep. The powerful rumble sounded like Toothless in a way, but at the same time, she couldn't have been more different. _Deadly Nadder,_ Hiccup thought again, and with the thought came a spell of sudden joy. Of _course_. And the restless shake of her head -- of course, yes. In his minds eye he could still see the bird-like dragon as it was in the woman's dream, wings stretched out to drift upon the open skies and spiky tail bobbing for balance.

He moved before he could even begin to think about the consequences, as if it were the most natural and obvious thing in the world to do, and by the time the silent drone of their hold over him had shifted to encompass _surprise_ , Hiccup's hand was already poised to touch the waking dragon's snout.

No, wait....not his snout. Nadders liked ---

...um....

His fingers hovered for a moment, thoughtful and still. And then they shifted, slid, brushed just so along the leftmost curve of the Nadder's jaw, in that space that was most difficult for them to scratch themselves---

The sleepy, dreaming whine melded seamlessly into a comfortable purr.

"There you go!" Hiccup laughed happily. "You like that, huh?" His fingers touched the dip just below her throat, that soft spot he could curl his fingers into just right, and a pleased sigh rippled through the dragon's bright body accordingly. White scales, silver, yellow and blue...Hiccup nuzzled his head beneath the Nadder's just as he had with Toothless and smiled at the tired, welcoming sound that greeted him.

"Back to sleep, girl..."

The dragon felt like she was shuddering, uselessly trying to make her body cooperate and stay upright. Soon she couldn't manage even that.

"Hiccup!"

Her head tucked itself limply on top of folded claws. Hiccup smoothed his hands over, and over and over, and willed her to rest well. She'd need a good recharge, after all that flying.

" _Hiccup!_ " Jack hissed again. Hiccup felt a hand grab him around the bicep. The indignant surprise faded quickly from the Prince's expression as he approached, and the hand released him just as fast. Eyes narrowed, Jack fixed both hands back around his staff, prodding the Nadder's limp body experimentally with the crook. The dragon's scales rose and fell, snoring.

Another prod, this one more insistent.

"...I don't _believe_ it." Jack sputtered out, laughing. "You put it to sleep!" His shoulders slumped in pleased disbelief. " _How?_ " Chilly fingers scooped up his hands, pouring over the pads of his fingers with such excitement, it was as if he expected gems to pour from his open palms. " _How?_ You just _touched_ that dragon and it fell right over...!"

"It's -- it's nothing." Hiccup started, blinking, but Jack was steering him quickly back again, away from the dragon, into the range of Pitch's curiously wide eyes. The Nightmare King took his hands, and Hiccup went still, inside and out. Pitch stroked the skin thoughtfully, slipped the pads of his fingers along the inside of his palm. Whatever he seemed to sense, it was more than Hiccup had expected. It lifted the corners of his mouth, softened the unforgiving cut of his glassy eyes.

"Sleep paralysis." he said, more to himself than to Hiccup or Jack. "You've drugged the beast."

Hiccup mouthed at the air, soundless. There was a way that the Nadder had moved, but...it seemed so _natural_ , even if it was a little more sluggish than he had expected. Like something he'd seen before, in a dream. In a memory. "It's just a scratch behind the ears." he muttered nervously, glancing frightfully at Jack as if waiting for extra confirmation. "They like it..."

"I'm sure they do." Pitch assured him sweetly. "Just as much as they like to rest, I should think." It was surreal, how calm he sounded. Hiccup knew, beyond his own instinct, that it was uncalled for to have moved out of their range so suddenly, without their direction. But despite that, miraculously, the Nightmare King seemed _pleased_ with him. "Did you drain its energy, I wonder...?"

Hiccup didn't know what to say. Pitch traced one finger along the creases of his palms, as if following invisible threads. Distantly, he could hear Jack muttering something. Giggling. There were sounds, faint little taps as if he were going back to toying with the sleeping Nadder. _Drugged_ , Pitch said. She certainly wasn't sleeping lightly anymore, if she could sleep through that. A faint rustling -- Jack lifting his wings, maybe. Peering underneath.

"I don't know." Hiccup started uselessly.

"Do you feel stronger?"

"N-no." Another swallow. His stomach remained pleasantly full, but that fear-taste was beginning to ebb from his mouth already. Hiccup bit the inside of his cheek. "Sorry, I -- she was waking up....I thought I'd let her sleep?"

A crackling sound of ice broke through, followed by a thud. Jack was laughing wickedly, a bounce in his step when he re-appeared at Hiccup's side. "You thought _that_ was good? You should see him on that Night Fury, Pitch. Let him have a proper test drive. What did I tell you? Isn't he a prize? Fireballs, loop-de-loops...believe me, you'll see!""

A hand brushed his cheek again. The backs of his fingers.

A caress.

"I do see." Pitch said, and smiled.

\-------

He remembered clutching Toothless to him so tirelessly that his arms ached. There was a time when the reptilian rattle of his heart had been the only thing there to hold. He could not pinpoint when, or why, or how exactly he had managed to keep himself on his feet without the warmth of him there to cling to -- all he could think was that he was here _now._ It was all that was important. Even so, it was always Toothless's center that reached him first. It made sense, of course -- they had to be connected, or else Toothless would not have been so quick to catch him. But if Hiccup considered himself new to Above, it was an entirely different matter for his friend. His pupils became knife-sharp at the first sniff of sea-salt air, wings tense, back hunched as if ready to fight. Hiccup could count his teeth in the blue dark, their inward curve highlighted by the watching moon.

It helped immensely that the image of dreamsand was so fresh in his memory. Hiccup kept the golden picture of the Deadly Nadder purposefully in mind as he tried his best to console Toothless. The Night Fury bowed his head, an automatic gesture to let him climb upon his back more easily. There was a harness there - a perfect fit. Jack had toyed with the idea of improving upon it once, but Toothless hadn't allowed him close to try.

He was glad, actually -- he hardly trusted himself to handle the contraption for fear it might break. There was a part of the mechanism that Hiccup could fit his prosthetic foot into, and without it, Toothless could only manage small leaps at a time.

It was this he adjusted now. The sound of the metal peg slotting into place eased the tension from Toothless' frame, soothing out his sharp edges into graceful lines.

Pitch had taken them to an island with no houses, no sheep, no stables with folded wings resting with blissful ignorance inside. He did not wait in the moonlight where Hiccup could see him, only feel him there, a constant buzz in the back of his head and the ghostly chill of his hand lingering against the side of his face.

"It's okay, buddy." Hiccup whispered absently under his breath, and Toothless tossed his head and shook out his wings as if to remind him that they were still securely attached. There was a particular, higher way he'd ride in the saddle when he was below ground and the most common form of flying was leaping between rocks, but the open air posed a different challenge, and more of a possibility of falling. Hiccup couldn't help but sink down low. His legs where they gripped tight around Toothless felt laughably weak.

The moon was very, very far away. Hiccup tried to forgot the distance, tried to forget the eyes, and thought wistfully of what the milky surface might feel like under his hand.

Dreamsand, maybe.

Toothless understood. He crouched low to the ground, and his wings became open sails, and Hiccup curled his fingers in tight as they took off and thought again, _here goes--_

And then the sky was spinning all around him, and Hiccup was shouting something, curling in tight with his head bowed and forehead pressed hard to Toothless' back. His stomach was down on the ground without him, and his voice was shrill on the air, and fire, _fire_ , there was _so much **fire** \-- _

He was falling _up_ \---

There was a positively feral _snap_ of a sound. And fear, bright and sharp and slamming through his center like the relentless clatter of a bell -- his own fear, and layered passionately on top of that, Toothless', surging up with protective fierceness in response. Hiccup felt the both of them jolt, then rock violently as something made impact beneath Toothless' claws. Back and forth, the weight of their bodies swaying. Hiccup couldn't muster the courage to open his eyes. Images flickered behind the closed lids rapidly -- his hands behind his back, dark in his eyes, in his mouth, and Jack's giddy weight slamming into the side of the Canary's cage until it swung like pendulum on its suspended chain --

He could feel Toothless' horror, urgent and furious as his head whipped around, looking for the source of the fear -- the _fire_ , the _falling_ \---

\--- they.

They weren't falling.

They were never falling.

They were swaying, still.

White-knuckled, Hiccup managed to ease one eye open.

What he saw wasn't fire after all. It was stars. _Thousands_ of them. And the white moon, and silver tufts of clouds, and leaves clinging to branches around them like scattered letters on the wind. They were in a tree, he realized abruptly. The swaying wasn't from a shaking cage, but Toothless landing hurriedly in the branches. He remained perched there, melded expertly into the darkness and hunched like a bird of prey.

With his heart in his mouth, Hiccup stared hard at the back of his head. He had seen this before...this exact sky. The very same stars. The sight of Toothless with his ears flicking, picking through the air for sounds that Hiccup couldn't detect. Exhilaration bubbled with him at the memory, a learned euphoria that surfaced naturally and chased away any remaining, senseless fear.

"I..." Hiccup started. "--sorry. Bud. I'm--" _Ready_ , he thought, and this time he didn't have to say it. Toothless _felt_ it. His wings, when they stretched out again, were gentle. Cautious. The second takeoff was perfectly soft and straight. Hiccup tensed in the saddle, but he didn't close his eyes, and the fear didn't resurface.

They were only gliding. Like Jack on the wind, smooth and free. Toothless tilted his head back, gold burning eyes fixed hopefully on Hiccup. _Okay?_ they seemed to say, and Hiccup smiled back and eased up his death grip just so, enough to allow some comfort to creep in.

 _Okay_ , he thought.

His leg seemed to know what to do. It shifted and clicked when Toothless wanted to turn. Hiccup tried to move with him, following a basic understanding -- lean your body this way, hold your foot that. They passed through a cloud, cool and misty, and then above where the colors of the night were rich and deep. Hiccup thought of the woman on the Nadder and eased up one hand to skim his fingers through the milky air.

A sound escaped him, soft and delighted. Toothless mirrored it happily back at him.

"What do you think, bud? Higher?"

And faster. Smoother. Toothless seemed to know just how far to push without frightening him, and soon Hiccup was laughing, shrieking with delight and urging him up and up. This must be what dreamsand felt like drifting through open air. His head was blank, but his mind was shifting, glowing, _gold._

The moon sailed past them, a watching stranger. And skipping past it, a silhouette of black against white, was the Prince's shape.

He didn't need a dragon, of course. The wind had long since been his ally. Still, it awed him just how easily Jack could turn himself on the air, flitting about like a blue-black raven and idling in just the right light for Hiccup to make out the elation on his face. Then he tucked his arms back, staff and all, and rocketed down to join them with a whoop of joy.

Jack skimmed a corkscrew pattern around them, waving in encouragement. Mischievous. Hiccup had long since learned to tell when he wanted to play, and it was clear now in his language. Contagious, even -- Hiccup grinned suddenly, strengthening his grip on Toothless and urging him with a burst of speed. Jack was fast, of course, but somehow he already knew that Toothless was much faster. They left him behind in an instant, Toothless with a daring rumble of a laugh and Hiccup chanting under his breath, _come on, come on!_

Sky, sky, beautiful, glorious, _open_ sky. Hiccup felt perfectly naked in it, swept up and blown back and tangled up in the gaps between twinkling stars. Toothless shrieked joyfully and shot a blast of white-blue from his open jaws. It streaked far beyond them like a bullet and exploded suddenly--

"Wh/aaa--!!/"

\--and the Toothless dodged, and Hiccup's scream because a laugh -- that was _close_ , but gods, Thor above it was so, so _fun._ He thought he'd known Jack's love for games, but this was a whole new playing field, new rules, even an _advantage._

More fireballs, one-two-three- _ten_ , lightening fast with the Night Fury playfully dodging the backlashes every time. Hiccup felt heat blast by him on the last circle past -- the warmth was actually _pleasant_. Why was he so afraid of fire before? This wasn't even a red flame, he realized with sudden mirth. This was Toothless's fire, all pale energy and protective might. This was something that could never hurt him.

Jack took a shortcut, teleporting through the darkness ("thought you had me!" he shouted playfully as he streaked up to meet them) and Hiccup changed positions, heard the solid _click!_ of the prosthetic adjusting Toothless's tail fin, and down they fell again towards the forested land, leaving Jack wide-eyed behind. Hiccup actually saw him vanish completely into shadow like a creature made of water. The next second he was popping out from behind a tall pine, laughing loudly and kicking off the surface of the bark to rocket towards them.

His staff was at his side -- not a threat, of course not -- but then Hiccup stalled, and Toothless pressed forward, and their connection faltered flat in-between, lending just enough time to the limp tail fin to drop them suddenly a few yards in the air. Hiccup was halfway to screaming before instinct seemed to overtake him, tipping the two of them sideways into a clean barrel roll. Toothless's wings whipped out to break their fall.

And then they were touching down to earth again with panther-like grace, Toothless chortling low, Hiccup wind-swept and breathless. Jack came spiraling down not far from them, landing in an animal crouch and bringing with him star-bursts of frost crystals from where his feet slammed into the naked grass.

" _ **Yeah!**_ ' he shouted, straightening in a rush with one fist thrown victoriously in the air. The staff came spinning down hard in the other, striking the ground in a purposeful blow that sent long, icy streaks of white across the terrain. He looked wild, untamed like the eye of a self-made storm. " **Hah!** \-- now _that_ was fun, Hiccup!"

He turned quickly on his heel, searching, searching, and then his eyes found a place in the darkness and he rushed towards it suddenly, laughing, "Did you _see!?_ "

A set of white teeth gleamed through the black. And there was Pitch, arms open, hands reaching out suddenly to take either side of Jack's face, and --

"Jack, my boy!" he laughed. Hiccup had never heard him laugh quite like that before. It was a dark and terrifying sound, as if their flight had actually left him _excited._ "My beautiful, _wicked_ boy--"

For a moment there was only Jack's face, wide-eyed and pressing in eagerly . Then Pitch folded to meet him and the negatives between them were all erased. He broke away grinning, his hands on Jack's shoulders, but Jack was already burning up to meet him again, saying _I told you, I told you!_ and _isn't he something? I was right, wasn't I?_ \--

And, " _Yes._ "

Kisses. Laughter. Hiccup had never seen them like this. He had never seen much of them together at all. It had always been his cage before, just himself and Jack and the bars all around them, and then it was Toothless, Toothless, Toothless. Jack and the moon. Jack and all the imprints of the Nightmare King's watchful eyes. But never the two of them set aside and visible like this, gripping each other tight as if Hiccup wasn't there to witness it.

He wasn't sure if he should be looking closer or looking away. There was a ghost sensation of hands on his face, eyes on his body, and Pitch's laughter was burning inside him, turning the buzz in his brain to a deafening roar.

Hiccup bent to encircle his arms around Toothless' neck. The dragon's heat seared strong against his own chest, centering him again. And with that clarity came the dawning recognition of their aftermath -- they were happy, after all. They were pleased....somehow, despite all the tripping and blind fumbling in the dark, he had crash-landed on the target that made his masters _proud._

He remained smiling, helplessly silent as the Nightmare King whispered secrets words to his Prince. And then he was gone again, cloaked by the night's shadow, and Jack was back at his side saying " --that's a wrap, Hic!"

He didn't need to be told to close his eyes this time.

It was only a little different returning to the Nightmare Realm on Toothless rather than in Jack's arms. The touchdown was smoother, the fall slightly cleaner, and the change in air seemed a little less surprising considering the altitudes they had just climbed through moments before. When he opened his eyes again it was just him and his dragon blinking back to reality.

There was cold in the air, still -- Jack couldn't have gone too far. Hiccup found himself suddenly and selfishly glad, because there was someone he wanted a moment to celebrate with, too.

Hiccup slid off the saddle to meet Toothless, nearly tripping in his haste. There was a barely contained energy surging through the Night Fury still, shifting all through his wings and tickling the shape of his ears. His tail swung back and forth, tongue darting out to flick eagerly over the air.

"Buddy--" he started, but Toothless surged forward up into him before he could finish, nudging his great black head beneath Hiccup's arms. His purrs were deep and adoring, content. Hiccup felt as if he were drowning in them. They vibrated against his open palms, buzzing through his skin and into his blood like a forbidden language only they could understand.

They pressed their foreheads together, as easy and synchronized a motion as any instinctual adjustment of a prosthetic leg to prosthetic fin. Hiccup's jaw was aching from the force of his smiles. His lips found Toothless's cheek, his snout, the corner of his gold-bright eye, chaste but unquestionably loving. And _grateful_ , so, _so_ grateful that his best friend was here with him, where no one could ever take him away--

Toothless licked his cheek, tousling up the already tousled hair. Hiccup could feel the energy burning off him slowly, and the take of spent muscles beginning to ache. "You tired, huh?" he cooed, soaking up his attentions like nourishment. "You had a good time?" Hiccup rubbed his softer cheek against a rough, scaly one, laughing as the dragon wriggled and writhed happily against him. "...me too, bud! Me too...I can't wait to do it again...gotta sleep first though, Toothless, rest up..."

A thick, wet tongue lapped at his cheek once more. Hiccup licked him right back, burst into laughter when Toothless tried to shake it off in unexpected surprise, ears flicking. He couldn't stop smiling. It hung there on his face long after the dragon's heartbeat had slowed itself into slumber, long after his own mind went soft and hazy and pleasantly blank within the safety of his other half's company.

He couldn't remember how he'd ever survived without knowing this heartbeat was in touching distance. Couldn't even recall properly what his mind had been like without him -- it felt like a page torn out from a diary, that vague recollection of laying on his back, listening to Toothless' voice from afar and wanting and wanting --

And then _getting._ And Jack's relieved laughter, and Pitch's awed smile, and the Valhalla's grace of their approval.

Hiccup turned his head hopefully, looking for a shape of black against black, ferns of frost to contrast the inky shadow. He wasn't sure how long Jack had been watching, exactly, with Toothless so thoroughly distracted by him, and himself so thoroughly distracted by Toothless...but he was here now, seated on very end of a slab of rock and lounging as still as stone.

Hiccup felt cool rock beneath his feet, the warmth of Toothless' scales beneath his palm, and the phantom sensations of Jack's hands around his waist. Trailing over his thighs. Nestled in the Prince's lap like a crown jewel, his favorite plaything, the seat of honor in the Fearling Prince's court.

Jack must have been thinking along the same lines. The pulse in his center was hungry, and the open spaces around him were a clear invitation. His elbows were propped against rock, hands hanging loosely, legs were kicked out carelessly and crossed at the ankle. There was a need there, in the expectant way he waited. A sudden urge to stumble for him, as Hiccup had made such a habit of when Jack was in his mood. Fall at his feet, and whine, and beg, and _rush_ to have them joined again, to make sense of all those things that had felt so blurry before.....

....they didn't feel so blurry, now.

Hiccup stood, slowly, purposefully, with a grace he hadn't known he was capable of. There was a bizarre delight in the simplicity and power of the movement, the subtle changes he could invoke within. Natural seduction. A different composure to the shadow on him. They lay weighted and drippy, clinging to him like hungry hands. He felt like a creature born of tar, fearlessly rising to offer himself to his master.

....and why would he fear, anyway? He had Toothless now. And he had his master's pride, and Jack -- glorious, _merciful_ Jack with his book full of secret pleasures. All the things Hiccup had spent so long learning and could present to him anew.

He took a step, careful to mind the bad leg, reaching at the neckline of his shadow robe as he moved. His eyes never left Jack's as he slipped his fingers beneath the hem and shrugged the robe from his shoulders, leaving it to dissolve into sulfurous foam around his waist and ankles.

And he could feel it so _clearly_ , Jack's wanting him. Even as his eyes never left Hiccup's, he could feel how they drank in every inch of him with that same cannibalistic desire that had surged through him when he had watched the halo of gold from the Above world morph itself into delectable black. It brought a wetness back beneath his tongue, parted his lips in anticipation - the thought of being devoured similarly, of Jack corrupting him, pulling him apart apart piece by piece to fit between his teeth.

Step, step, step, until he was too close to walk any further, and there was no closer he could get except to climb over, straddle his lap and press himself within the welcome home of his open arms. Jack's hands fit themselves easily around his hips, sliding upwards over his sides, his chest, his throat. Hiccup felt a chilly palm cup his cheek and turned into it with relish.

"I..." he started, so softly it was hardly audible. "... _you_...."

"Me." Jack said, looking up at him with such desire that even the shadow around him seemed to burn.

"....you _saved_ me...."

"...yeah." The hand shifted, thumb adjusting to caress a cheekbone. "Yeah, I did~ It took you long enough to figure that out, huh?"

There was so much more to say. But he hadn't the words, or the grace to use them, and Jack's grip around his center was squeezing, wanting, wanting, _wanting_ , and Hiccup thought, at last, that he had the clarity of mind to properly give.

Jack didn't seem alarmed when he pushed himself back to stand. His legs uncrossed at the ankle, knees parting so that Hiccup could kneel between them. The Prince's shadow robe didn't dissolve, even as Hiccup had nothing left to expose. His eyes were wide with awe and strangely vulnerable, as if he were watching a coveted dream unfold.

Had they always been like that...? Maybe it was Hiccup's fault for not noticing -- maybe he had just never looked so closely, before.

In adoration, Hiccup touched the shadows of Jack's legs, then bent to touch his lips to his left knee. And again, at his shin. Jack's skin was like gleaming silver swathed beneath black, the value of which he had been all too blind to understand. Now it was like coming home again, with a sticking point to ground him -- he was so _lucky_ , so very lucky for what his masters gave him -- the black sky, the stars, _Toothless_ \--

He placed kisses along the fit swell of his calf, all the way down to his ankles and instep. His feet. Jack giggled something under his breath and stretched out his toes as Hiccup worked his way back up. He nuzzled the inside of his thigh between kisses, a silent declaration of love amongst a sea of thank yous.

Jack's chortle became something soft and waiting.

When Hiccup pressed a worshipping kiss to base of his cock, he barely even breathed.

It was such a new concept to him, teasing like this. Jack's satisfaction in the light of it was a territory that had never been explored. Curiosity. Approval. It felt so strange to be gifted with this freedom. Pride swelled within him as he licked a wet stripe up the underside, breathed out against the sensitive skin. Jack gave a throaty groan when he fit the damp head against the fold of his tongue.

"... _geez_ , Hic..."

He felt so full. Full from the nightmares. Fuller and fuller himself at the feedback of satisfying his master actively, in this languid way he had never tried before, as if they had all the time in the world --

Or until Toothless woke up.

But it was fine -- _I'll keep quiet_ , Hiccup thought happily, opening his mouth to take Jack inside. He had -- everything. He had everything he could ever want. He had the freedom of flight tucked away inside his heart. He had a ground beneath his knees that he wasn't cracked and bleeding out against, a soul mate that caught him within the embrace of leathery wings and would catch him a thousand times over, a sky that welcomed him back like an old friend. He had 'I love you' and 'very good' and a lover that lounged back on his elbows and let him repay him as he liked. He had affection he could feel, as if it were a physical thing unto itself, a layer of invisible clothing snug against his own skin.

And he _could_ feel it. He could feel Jack filling up his throat, bitter and cold on his tongue, the chilly fingers ruffling the shorter hairs at the nape of his neck. He could feel Jack's breath hitch when he hollowed out his cheeks, his throaty " _ohhhh_ " when when he sank down to take him to the root.

....why had he never thought to _do_ this before?

"You...had a good time, huh...?" Jack teased breathlessly, and now his tone had a _rumble_. Hiccup pressed a hand over his belly to feel it twitch beneath his palm and hummed a note of agreement low in his throat, where he was sure to feel it vibrate. The delighted giggle he earned in return sent sparks skipping down his spine.

There was no grip forcing his head still while Jack thrust in, just his own hands braced along the pale line of his hips, the pleasant stillness in his brain as he focused all attention on his task, drawing beads of sweat to collect on wintery skin. Jack's knuckles brushed his cheek, much in the same way Pitch had touched him. They trailed tenderly down the side of his face down to his chin, collecting some of the wetness dribbling there.

"... _wow_ , you...Hic, that's _good_...you're doing so _good_..."

... _so good_....

He was a book again, and Jack was turning the pages. He had forgotten how fulfilling it was to be an open spine and papery sheets, to feel the pressure of words scratched into his skin, a thousand tiny focal points to bury himself within. Jack's ice opening him up from the inside, Toothless' heart beating steady in his chest, Pitch's power plucking wires in the back of his head, saying _go on, go on_....

And on. And on, until he could hear the telling sounds that spilled from his lips when he was getting close. Sure enough, there were soon hands back in his hair, gripping to jerk him onto his cock in a more forceful rhythm. When the building hit its breaking point, they fisted tight, shoving him down the length and holding firmly in place. Hiccup traced encouraging circles over his skin and swallowed him down gratefully all the while.

There was a moment in which neither of them seemed quite willing to move. Jack's hands were loose again. His breath began to even out. So Hiccup straightened slowly, easing his spent cock out from between his lips, and shifted to curl blissfully against his chest.

There was a hand back in his hair, soon enough. Just petting. It didn't pull at all, but he could still feel the prickling pain through his scalp, the lingering sting in the backs of his eyes. His knees were aching against the stone. His throat was throbbing, sore.

"I'm pretty sure I've never been this happy in my life." Hiccup heard himself whisper into the dark.

"...you haven't, no."

"...okay. Thank you...." The corner of his mouth quirked upwards. "Thank you, for summing that up..."

Jack laughed very suddenly, as if this were a particular, private joke. Hiccup felt like laughing a little, himself. At last the sound of his breathing seemed to shift and growl and separate, until it was very clearly not Jack rumbling at him this time, but a very tired dragon just beginning to blink back awake.

 _....aaaand there's Toothless, not a moment too soon,_ Hiccup thought wryly, and untangled himself from Jack's arms.

He _was_ very tired. The way Toothless called for him, he seemed to know that as well. And there was a place beneath his wing, open and inviting, where Hiccup couldn't resist curling up and letting one warm paw close around him to keep him safe in the night.

"....Hiccup?" Jack started, pushing himself unsteadily to his feet.

Toothless nudged him once when he got close again and sniffed him over suspiciously. The rough nose wrinkled in distaste, but he folded his great head back down to rest once he seemed to have decided there was nothing fearful about the new scents upon him. Hiccup tucked himself beneath a wing and let the sound of the dragon's mighty heart lull him back into serenity.

There was plenty of room in his embrace. Room for Jack, too. But Jack wasn't making any move to join them; he was staring at Toothless strangely, as if he had only just remembered he was there.

Hiccup picked a note of discord from his master's tense frame. It clenched around his heart: a bitter, winter wind. But before he could move to correct it, Jack was gone, turned on his heel and melted back into the shadow. The curious imprint of his face lingered like the moon, aftershocks behind closed eyelids, too strange and distorted to analyze in its entirely. He watched it until it faded, until there was nothing left to see except the darkness, and nothing left to feel except the weight of his best friend holding him.

He dreamed again of lying on a bed of ash, with tongs of flame that crept closer only to be frightened away by Toothless' growls.

When he woke again, the ache had subsided from his scalp entirely.

\-------

Hiccup watched the Nightmares and fearling wisps come and go like pulls of the tide. Pitch's horses, skeletal and twisted in ever-changing bands of onyx sand, came and went through their favorite chambers of the hives in various states of solidity. Some nights, when he could only assume Pitch and Jack had left to feed alone, they would return renewed with energy, their cries reverberating within the cavernous confines in throngs of triumphant power. Hiccup imagined he could sense the fear on them, a lingering taste that he could lick from his fingers in thoughtless envy as he tried to recall phantom sensations of satisfaction in his stomach and flavor in his mouth.

He spent hours underground on Toothless' back, crossing higher distances in short leaps at a time and taking meticulous note of the movements required for his prosthetic to sync properly with the red fin. In the empty stretches of the Nightmare realm, adrift on the din of screaming silence, he could not seem to re-create the seamless way he had maneuvered the mechanism as he had in the skies of Above.

When Jack returned, he did not mention the sky, or the persistent want to feed again. Toothless seemed to understand his hunger on some level. He tired himself with snapping at the air around them in a mockery of catching fish from a teaming river.

When Toothless slept, Jack plucked him from his feet and turned him against a wall so that his stomach was pressed to the stone. His fingers found Hiccup's hair, and his mouth found his throat, and Hiccup hissed and mewled and tried to find some semblance of an order to follow as the sting of fang teeth took their time branding themselves into his skin. There was a suggestion of hips grinding against his back, friction through the barely-there shadow. Jack dragged his tongue over the bleeding spots, marked fresh bruises over the fading until Hiccup's mind was burning with it, the litany of _want, need, yours._

He tried to arch himself into Jack's hands, presenting himself as invitingly as possible.

When Jack left him there, he waited there for some time, uncertain if he was going to return.

In a way it had been easier when there were bars around him and there was nowhere to go besides his ten paces of steel. Hiccup pressed his cheek to the stone wall, focused as best he could on the pain of the fang collar singed into his neck until he could no longer remember how long he had been waiting. He thought, maybe, he should seek him out and apologize, but he wasn't sure what to apologize for. And besides, Jack seemed happy just marking him like that, and he might not be happy with a needless apology.

So he waited, and waited, and eventually Toothless found him and perched by his side to wait with him, smiling at him hopefully with a mouth full of pointed white teeth. Hiccup mimed a toothy grin back at him, batted a hand when Toothless batted a paw, and soon they were laughing and play-fighting themselves into an exhausted heap.

Toothless spent the afternoon sniffing at his neck and the copper smell of blood prickling faintly at the surface. His eyes on Hiccup were questioning, studying the exact inflection of his smile.

\-----

The next time he was brought Above, Toothless was not brought with him.

Pitch told Jack to lead the way and did not say another word. Hiccup could feel him long after he stopped seeing him, lurking just out of sight, as powerful and ever-present as the waxing moon.

He thought there was a chance they'd find the woman with the yellow hair again. Hiccup kept that silent hope tucked away in his heart -- he had liked her face, her pink cheeks and almond eyes. He had liked her wispy dream of riding on the back of a Deadly Nadder. And he had liked her fear, so sweet and bright and fresh; it had stayed with him long after, fueling him with secret energy.

But Jack didn't take him to the Nadder's house. Outside the hut they approached instead, a great blood-red dragon was resting. It was, at a glance, at least three times the size of Toothless. Its wingspan was incredible to behold, even folded as it was in sleep. Hiccup could not seem to regard it without imagining its brilliant body cloaked in a wreath of flame, spitting gold and amber as its razor claws dug fiercely into the soft earth. "Monstrous Nightmare," he said. The name was tugged from nowhere. Jack grinned, ruffled his hair and brought them in for a closer look. This dragon was fast asleep, not even stirring as the Nadder had been, although Jack insisted that he sedate it anyway just to make sure.

So Hiccup ran his hands over the rough, beautiful scales and thought, _rest well -- you deserve it._

If he concentrated, he could almost picture the power Pitch claimed was there sleeping within his hands. The quiet, steady lull of hypnagogia, gently tugging the dragon's mind further and further into helpless slumber.

No dreamsand floated above the its head. Maybe this was a theme with dragons. Or, more likely, there was just no need for it. The great chest rose and fell, exhausted but perfectly comfortable. Hiccup counted the breaths just to make sure. In, out, in...

Its whole shape was different. Made for different flights, and different battles. The long, sharp claws for trapping prey, the mouth perfect for biting close-range. And imagine such a creature breathing fire? How big that must be? How _powerful?_ It frightened him as much as it fascinated him, and Hiccup found himself strangely glad it was sleeping. Or at least, that it was sleeping while Toothless wasn't here to protect him.

And then Jack said, "Ready?" and Hiccup nodded back, "Ready," and they were both stepping in shadow, navigating unseen within the house connected to the dragon's stable.

There was a man inside, sleeping with no dreamsand above his head. A Viking helmet was propped up on his headstand, boxy and rusted. The horns on either side were in the shape of a ram. Jack spared him a glance, considering, before tugging Hiccup through the shadows to the upper level, where a much older man was resting. He was built like a battleship, with muscular arms tossed out across the lumpy bed carelessly. "His father," Jack supplied, nodding downstairs. "Brother of the Chief. He always dreams the same thing, wait and see..."

They waited until a thread of golden sand trickled above his head and formed an meaningless shape. Then Jack put a finger to his lips, adjusted his weight carefully as if considering his options, and _dropped_ into the shadow so suddenly that Hiccup found himself reeling back in surprise.

For a moment it seemed the room was empty, with only Hiccup, the Chief's sleeping brother, and the gloom to keep him company. The dreamsand slowly began to change, arranging itself into a sail, fluttering in the wind...and beneath that, a long, thin shape...

A boat...

The gold sand bubbled beneath it in the shape of waves as the old man gave a sigh of content. And then Jack's white smile broke through the dark behind his bed, and the shadows of the room began to stretch and slide, shifting in circles like a turning wheel.

Hiccup shrunk back against the wall despite himself. He felt strangely naked, with Jack so far out of his reach. If the man woke up, the first thing he would see might be Hiccup himself. The thought was enough to freeze him, stilling every muscle as he willed himself to blend in with the darkness and hide.

Jack's fingers ticked along the headboard like the restless legs of an insect. Where his hands touched, frost chilled the wood and shadows extended, taking claim over the room. One of them in particular shuddered and darkened, forming into the shape of a person. Tall, thick, hair tugged back into twin tails...she seemed about the same size as the man, if not a little shorter. Jack tipped his head this way and that, adjusting the shadow puppet as he liked. Details emerged slowly; armor pads for her shoulders. Water dripping from her hunched frame. He shot Hiccup a secretive smile, nearly bouncing in place with his excitement, and then fell through the darkness again where Hiccup could no longer discern him.

The shadow of the woman grew suddenly darker. Her fingers twitched once, twice, feeling out the new form...

It was so _real_ , that shape of her...

And then her mouth split open, the shadows receding to form the negative imprint of Jack's hungry smile, and Hiccup realized quite suddenly what was happening. Just as Pitch praised his paralysis, Jack had special tricks of his own up his sleeve. Hiccup couldn't see him because he was _invisible_ , and his hiding spot wasn't just the darkness, but his own illusions.

The shadow-puppet stretched a heavy, water-weighted arm out and opened her -- _Jack's_ \-- mouth. The voice that bled through was most certainly not Jack. It wasn't _human_ , but it wasn't a fearling's lilt, either. The tone was shrill, sobbing, choked with water and gargling upon the air like a living nightmare.

" _H-el..p..._ "

The dreamsand above the sleeping man's head reacted instantly. It flinched back in confusion, the glittering golden shape of the peaceful ship flicking this way and that as if caught by a sudden storm. Blackness began to spread through, from the tips of the sails down to the wooden shell.

The man groaned loudly, his slack hands clenching into fists. Hiccup could see his face beginning to contort with horror and grief.

" _Drown..ing...!_ " Jack's shadow gasped out. The man's teeth were bared. A high, thin sound was escaping him, as if he was trying to wail but in his terror had forgotten exactly how. The newly-turned nightmare sand above his head re-shaped itself so that holes appeared in the sturdy sail, the waves crashing higher and higher...

" _D...ar...ling...._ "

Hiccup felt like his chest was beginning to constrict. He could taste the fear upon the air, but it was a dulled and curious thing, and Jack seemed to be receiving the bulk of it anyway. He could tell by the way his shadow-skin darkened, the pleased lilt to his mockery of a woman's voice. His wife, Hiccup thought suddenly. The puppet was supposed to be the man's wife.

And then Jack's hand, his _real_ hand, closed suddenly around Hiccup's wrist and tugged him into the dark.

He was blind for a moment, stumbling. Jack didn't teleport the way Pitch did. His momentum was quick and chaotic. When they re-appeared outside again, it was only Jack that was able to right himself gracefully. Energy coursed through him, bright in the manic laughter that burst from him in spades.

"I don't understand." Hiccup rasped once Jack's euphoria had died down into cheerful, ecstatic smiles.

"'Course...you weren't there." Jack sobered up, clapping a hand on his shoulder. "...he could have saved her, you know? So much for the brother of a Chief. He just _watched._ " He wiped at his eyes for a moment, chortling. "What a guy. What a _keeper._ "

There was something hidden within his tone. Bitterness. Contempt. Hiccup slid his own hand over Jack's grip on his shoulder, rubbing soothing circles around his knuckles.

The Prince's smile softened considerably.

"Didja get a taste?"

"Just a little." He admitted shyly.

"Let's hit up his son, he's not so bad. Kind of a wimp if you ask me, but." Jack shrugged, trailing off to give his cheek a playful pinch. He caught his nose when Hiccup wrinkled it, tweaking the very end to earn himself a sputter, and then he _smiled_ , a radiant, glowing smile Hiccup couldn't help but smile back into.

"What do you say, cutie?" he cackled, nuzzling their noses together sweetly. "You wanna scare the wimp?--"

"-- _who's that?_ " came a frazzled voice from behind him.

A hand, far to warm to belong to Pitch or Jack, touched his shoulder, then jerked sharply back. Fear filled the air, thick and strong. It didn't belong to Jack. It didn't belong to a _fearling._

And then; " _Hiccup?_ "

There was no time to think. Hiccup tensed and whipped around to face their company.

What he witnessed instead was a clip of Jack's frosted black hair, and the blur of his foot as it rounded between them and threw the voice's owner off balance. Whoever it was was shorter than him and twice as stocky - Hiccup had a moment to marvel at the difference in size before the crook of Jack's staff looped around the stranger's neck and hooked him abruptly to the ground.

" _ArGH--_ "

A shadow tendril coiled around Hiccup's wrist simultaneously and yanked him sharply aside. He stumbled at the force, heart hammering. There was more shadow in front of him now, a writhing mess that clawed and bound itself over the fallen man. Coils of it seized the stranger's wrists and ankles and fixed him tightly to the floor.

A stranger from Above. An _awake_ stranger.

It couldn't have been planned, that much was clear from Jack's primal panic. Hiccup recognized him on the second glance -- it was him, the one they had passed earlier, and the very same man that he had intended to find again. The son of the brother of the Chief. 

His open eyes were the color of cloudy, moonless skies.

Jack stood over him, flipping his staff in one smooth motion so the narrow end rested beneath the man's softer chin. The opposite side of his staff wasn't blunt, Hiccup realized suddenly, but had been sharpened to a deadly point, as if Jack had taken the time to whittle the wood down for this very purpose. Hiccup had never noticed before, but then, he had rarely brought his staff in with him when they were playing. And besides, he had never thought it important. Now he watched with detached fascination as the tip splintered over with frost until the sharpened end was like an icicle, gleaming and poised to fall.

" _Wait!_ " the man babbled, and the babble quickly became a scream, high and shrill and cut off suddenly into a helpless " _mmmph!_ " as a length of shadow fixed itself tightly over his mouth. Jack's eyes glittered like tinsel, lips parted. Soaking in the fear. Then, unexpectedly, he threw the staff aside, and Hiccup was watching him straddle the man's chest and fix his hands around his throat instead.

" _Ssh._ " he hissed. Hiccup could feel the rage within him, an endlessly growing storm.

" _Ssssh!_ " Again. _Hatefully._ The man was struggling, screaming into his gag, and then Jack's hands were squeezing and the muffled sounds of him turned raw and frightfully desperate. Hiccup felt a phantom itch tingle around his own neck. He could recall quite suddenly the distant memory of Jack's hands locked around his throat, the pleasured groans as Hiccup's lungs turned to fire, and the whispers afterward, _you did good, you did so good._

 _Yeah_ , he recalled serenely. _That was nice._ It was odd, though, because Jack's hands weren't letting up on this man's throat the way they had with Hiccup's, and the pleasure he got from it seemed a different thing entirely. He wasn't _aroused_ at all, although his pulse was going fast. And he was certainly having fun. There was a tidal wave of fear upon the air, a thrash of primal panic that filled Hiccup's brain like a fog and fed Jack's growing glee.

More than his glee -- this was vengeful, angry. His grin was a scimitar slash with fang teeth gritted tightly together. The right word popped unexpectedly into his head -- Hungry.

_Starving._

And then the line of shadow peeled itself off the man's mouth, and sounds filled the air. He rasped and choked, fingers twitching uselessly through the bonds. But Hiccup could hear him in his head, screaming that way that he did before Jack stopped him, screaming and screaming and screaming. His face was very red, so red it was almost purple, and the darkness of his eyes beneath looked like moist drops of ink.

Hiccup leaned forward despite himself, drunk and swaying on the terror that gushed from him. He could see his face a little better now, even colored as it was. He had a wide jaw and very thick eyebrows. A few missing teeth. His hair was short and dark and stuck out everywhere at odd angles beneath a crooked helmet fitted with the horns of a ram.

And there was a light in his eyes, just a spark, like one of the white pin-prick stars in the sky.

It was actually very beautiful, that bit of light.

Hiccup watched if flicker and surge and twist and shine and finally fold into itself and fade completely.

The man stopped moving, but he was screaming still. The noise of it bounced around in Hiccup's head, rattling the inside of his skull and stinging the backs of his eyes like it was trying to burn its way out. He wanted to dig his fingers in, create a new hole for it to escape through, or open his mouth and let it tear itself free like a bug bursting in a tangle of wings and legs from its prison jar. But his mouth was closed, and his hands were at his sides, and still he was screaming, screaming-- Hiccup didn't think he would ever stop screaming.

"Phew!" Jack whistled through his teeth, wringing out his hands. He sat back on the man's motionless chest, rubbing at the bones of one wrist, then the other. "Tough one! That's _one_ way to do it, I guess, heheh...he's out now for sure."

"Out?" Hiccup echoed. His palms tingled, as if he was the one who had squeezed them tight around the man's throat, felt the blood pulsing quick and hard underneath his skin.

Jack rose slowly, stood over him for a moment, considering, and then stepped gracefully across his chest him to retrieve the fallen staff.

"Yeahhhhh, you know. Out...." A loose gesture turned his hand as he searched for the proper words. "Out as in, out like a light. Out of this world. Asleep."

 _But there's no dreamsand._ His lips were numb, but perhaps they did move, because Jack seemed to understand his concerns just fine.

"Not everyone dreams with sand. Just the ones who have dreams you can change."

Right. Yeah, that made sense...the Nadder hadn't slept with dreamsand either, Hiccup thought. And neither had this man, back when they had first spotted him. But then, he had seen the Nadder's chest rising and falling after he had drugged it. Heard its snoring, all the catching breaths. It was a large creature though, as Jack said. Of course it would sleep larger, too.

"Geez, he's really tuckered out too, poor guy..." Jack leaned on his staff, stretching out a bony leg to nudge the body playfully with his toe. "Earth to Viking! ...nahh, he's a goner, just look at him."

Hiccup couldn't _stop_ looking. There was a long, dark ring of bruises forming around his throat with a few liquid marks oozing at the corners. Jack's nails must have done that -- they weren't particularly sharp, but the rules all changed when he dug them in hard enough. He thought of those nails on his hips, scratching playfully down his thighs - sometimes they drew blood, he knew.

"He thought he could touch you!" Jack added, laughing. "What a joke!"

"Yeah." Hiccup mumbled. He felt a little woozy. The fear upon the air wasn't so thick now with its source cut off, but as always, it was. A _lot_ to take in. Jack's brow raised, nose crinkling as he considered the scent upon the air. There was a new skip in his step when he bounded back to Hiccup's side.

"Not bad, eh? Boy, was he scared! _Petrified!_ I told you he was a wimp -- did you see him freak when he saw your face--? You had an instant effect, Hic! A real nightmare!"

Hiccup couldn't see his body now. Jack was in the way. It calmed him, unintentionally, to have his vision filled with gray and blue rather than the bloody dark of the nameless stranger's throat. "...do you think...? I didn't do anything--"

"You were _frightening._ " Jack bequeathed, white teeth gleaming in the dark.

The nourishment of fresh fear within him seemed to heighten everything. He was incredibly aware of his bare feet on the wooden floor, even the dust beneath his toes. Jack's eyes were lingering on his mouth, and a sense of yearning stirred within him at the intention.

...it was good. It was fine. Everything was alright. They could go home again...lay down again. And Jack could fuck his throat, and Hiccup could be greedy, take as much as he wanted. And before that -- before that -- he could....

Even the excitement that welled within him seemed more pronounced. It really woke him up, drinking that man's fear.

The man in question was still on the floor, asleep, although that sense of screaming was beginning to ebb beneath Jack's distraction.

....he wasn't even snoring....

But then Jack's fingers were laced with his, tugging him into a shadowy corner, and Hiccup thought dreamily -- _well, so what if he's not? He's out like a light, after all._

\-------

When they returned, Toothless was still sleeping deeply. Hiccup caught the shape of him as they passed, curled up in his great inky mass outside one of the hives. Nightmare sand had gathered above his head, twisting and turning into a definite figure, but before he could make out the exact shape they had rounded the corner and Toothless was gone.

Jack tugged him by the wrists, laughing his musical laugh. His voice was like a yard of silk slipped around his shoulders, pulling him forward into the darkness of a hive. Fearling wisps scattered and fled into nothingness, scurrying like rats between their tripping feet.

There was a tunnel, and then a cave, and all inside glittered the faint, alien faces of ancient and rare stones. The floor was slippery, wet with melting drops of ice. Jack folded his legs beneath him and tugged Hiccup into his lap. His fingers found his throat, petting the bruises there fondly.

"You did well," he purred, and pressed a nail into a particularly sore spot. Hiccup gasped at the unexpected pressure on a still-sensitive bite, the sting of pleasure-pain that caught wordlessly in the back of his throat. The Prince chuckled, a pleased, throaty sound that shot through him like a drug. Hiccup could feel him already, pressed half-hard against his hip.

"Pitch was happy, too...."

The man with the ram horns lingered unnervingly inside his head. The bloodied marks of nails. The sounds of terror, of fighting to breathe.

...and, clouds....

He fit a hand to Jack's belly thoughtlessly, recalling their exact shape, their color. Blue-white, like the screaming man's eyes. But -- no -- blue-white like the clouds that Toothless guided them through, Hiccup corrected himself stubbornly. The dreamy ones, misty and cool against their skin. Pleasant.

"Last time we did this..." he began nervously.

Jack guided his hand lower and took his time fixing Hiccup's fingers one by one around the width of his cock. "Yeah~?"

"Last time we went Above, we...we both ended up..."

His arousal twitched at the mention. " _...yeah_ ," Jack repeated, smokey and sinuous. "Tell me what you want, Hic."

"I want..."

...and Jack had loved it. And Pitch had loved it. And they had all felt so very _perfect_ , so smooth and flawless and entwined like individual threads in a greater design. Hiccup was so unpracticed with asking, but if he wanted it so badly, maybe, maybe Jack did, too...?

"Go on, sweetheart." Kisses. Pets. Fingers traced his ribs, his chest, circling over the place where his heart beat fast beneath the skin. "What do you want?"

Their hands met. Hiccup entwined their fingers together and leaned into him, drunk on the rush of his affection.

And breathed out at last, "...I want to fly..."

Jack's hands stilled. Hiccup felt suddenly as if he were stepping on ice of indeterminable thickness. His mouth opened, caught quickly on a plea, and before he could stop himself the words came rushing out to fill the space left by Jack's absence. "It was so _fun_ , Jack. It was amazing! I thought I'd be nice if we...I, I want to do it again....I thought that you, t-that is, that **_I_** \---"

"You want to _fly?_ " Jack interrupted, the corner of his mouth quirking in a disbelieving smile, and Hiccup was relieved to hear the evenness of his tone, with just the slightest giggle layered beneath. Yeah, that made sense, he just -- he hadn't expected such a specific answer.

"Well. Yeah." Hiccup wrung his hands out on his lap. "On Toothless?"

"...yeah." Jack said.

Hiccup grinned crookedly back. "...yeah?"

"Yeah....yeah. Sure."

"S-so, I. I can?"

Jack nodded faintly.

"Really? Right now...? Wow, _gods_ , thank you...!" Hiccup leaned into him adoringly, squeezing his hands again and bending to kiss his knuckles, one by one, grinning between each peck. "You're _amazing_...!"

"Yeah..."

" _Thank you_ , Jack!"

"Yeah..."

"I _love_ you..."

"Yeah, okay. Okay..."

Hands slid lovingly over his face. The pad of his thumb stroked just beneath the socket of his left eye, grazing tenderly over the freckles across his cheekbone.

Hiccup hardly had time to breathe before the fingers dropped down and locked swiftly around his jaw, pivoting to shove him on his side with sudden, jarring violence.

Impact.

For a long minute there was nothing in his brain but the ringing in his ears and the electric surge of pain that rattled through his skull. Disorientation. Vague details. That was his temple that struck the stony ground, that was his teeth burning indentations into his tongue, that was liquid in his mouth -- he couldn't seem to decipher if it tasted of sweat or iron. A coldness between his legs -- Jack's hand grasping impatiently at his cock. He felt nothing through the white noise of his ringing head, nothing under his skin or in his brain or in his center, where their bond seemed to have vanished entirely. And then the hand balled into a fist and stroked him roughly, a impatient force nudging his thighs open for better access, and Hiccup thought, _oh_ , and then aloud, " _oh_ ", and then Jack's mouth was sealed over his own and it all came tumbling back down his throat in reverse: _oh, oh, oh._

He couldn't see. It wasn't the blame of shadow now; the world was a blur through the white-hot searing of his head, gauzy and muddled and popping with stars as if his vision had decided only to take him halfway. Blobs and drips surrounded him in various shades of gray. He thought he was choking -- was that Jack's tongue, or his fingers? -- or maybe he was gasping -- it was so unusual, to be taken care of first -- and---

"I'm getting you off." Jack hissed into his ear. " _Moan._ "

Hiccup tried to moan.

Somewhere amongst that sea of gray, there had to be a face. He struggled to find it as his hands scratched and scrambled for something to hold on to. There were fingers inside him now. At least two; he could feel them stretching. It was habit that he followed, expectation which narrated what happened next as he swallowed the bitter taste that was rising in his throat: iron, copper, red.

Jack's fingers hooked and pulled apart, while the swollen head of his cock appeared to nudge in alongside them -- _focus_ , Hiccup thought, because this was important. This was the most important thing in the world. He could register the dry sting of him slotting in, the familiarity of it all, and then the world was going white again and it was all he could do to hold on to that word, _focus, focus._

There was shame in there somewhere. He couldn't focus on _Jack._

A pressure gripped beneath his knees, wrenching his legs up and apart until they were nearly folded back against his chest. Words were being spoken. He knew it because his Jack's breath was icy, and now Hiccup's cheeks were icy too, and his nose. Jack's tone was watery, strange, and was he happy or angry? Was he in pleasure, or was he frustrated? He tried to move, but the position was overpowering and his body didn't want to cooperate, still disoriented and weak from the blow. It was the most he could do to try and clench his muscles, let his whimpering bleed from him the way Jack liked. He had no idea what the effect was. The thread within his center that usually tugged him along like a marionette seemed to have gone completely slack.

" _Look,_ " Jack said, and there was a hand on his face, gripping at his jaw again. "At _me_ \---" His thumb dug into one cheek, his fingers the other, so that his mouth felt squished and forcibly pursed between them. Hiccup's vision was all liquid, but slowly two drops of blue appeared in the mist. He clung to them with all his might.

"Look at me," Over and over again. His awareness bled back slowly, centered by the sticking point of Jack's eyes. " _Look at me--_ " In time with his thrusts. The slapping sound of skin on skin were his exclamation points. Hiccup could feel him fuck in deep at the end of each breath, then jerk his hips back again, in, out, in. It didn't end until he could make out Jack's face in its entirety, wild and disturbed and threaded faintly with blue veins. He looked like a deity carved from ice, melting within him where they were joined. And then that beautiful face bent to bring their mouths together--

Relief flooded him. He could kiss back, now. The first sign of Jack's approval stirred within his core, as sweet and relishing as a breath of air. His hand fisted in his hair, jerked his head roughly back, and then Jack's teeth scraped over his throat again. Hiccup yelped when the points sank in hard enough to draw blood.

He could feel Jack's physical spend within him, the tight little groans that caught in his throat through release. They filtered directly into his mouth, blotting out the sound of him tugging free again and replacing all his pained gasps with sighs of relief.

"It's okay." Hiccup gasped through the din. "I see you. I see you..." There it was, finally, the pressure of arms pulling him close. A hand cupped beneath his rear, hoisted him up like a child so Hiccup's legs could splay messily around his waist. He tightened them in a clumsy hug and encircled his arms around his neck to match, clinging there as his master rose in an untidy line to his feet.

"I see you." Hiccup repeated with passion, now that he had the clarity to do so. "I _love_ you," he chanted, because Jack needed to hear it, and sure enough his heartbeat was starting to calm again. He tried helplessly to soothe him with pets of his fingers and graceless strokes of his palms, to imbue within his skin even a fracture of the adoration welling inside him.

A push sent them off into the air --

\--and _ah_ , he was _flying_. There was an airy way that only Jack flew, like he was coasting on the current of wind itself despite how dry and motionless the atmosphere within the Nightmare Realm remained. But he was flying -- _flying_ \-- and Hiccup felt a dizzy joy begin to spread within him like a drop of spilled and spreading ink.

He buried his face into the cool nook of his shoulder when they touched ground again. It shook beneath them, unsteady, but he couldn't find the will to care. _Now_ was the part where he climbed on Toothless, and _soon_ would be the part where Jack was in the air with them, a blue-black shape silhouetted against the midnight sky...

Jack knelt down and pried Hiccup's arms from their coil around his shoulders. He loosened up with thoughtless obedience and found himself sitting abruptly on cold steel.

Hanging steel.

"....Jack?" he whispered, dazed. But Jack was halfway to the door, and it was only when the bars snapped shut behind him that Hiccup realized exactly where he was.

He could feel the whole fixture rock when the Prince kicked off, swinging crookedly on its metal chain.

The echo of the lock sliding into place.

Time was an amorphous thing in the Nightmare Realm, sliding and dripping like sand between his fingers. Hiccup took inventory slowly, deduced what he could from his throbbing temple, the raw ache in his lower back, and thought again, _...oh._

Funny.

It took as much time to return to his cage as it did to fall from it.

\-----

Okay.

Okay.

_Okay._

\-----

He started slow. Counting seconds. Every second he spent watching the door, and every beat that stretched on when Jack didn't return. He counted the pulse of his own heart, the twitch of his fingers against the steel. He counted until he lost count and he could only stare, replaying the last few ten-fifteen-twenty-forty minutes in his head and trying to figure out what it was that he had done wrong.

He had a different view than before. The cages here were spread out more sparsely, dotted about him like similar stars from a different galaxy. Hiccup knew enough of the Nightmare Realm to know he may never see its end, but he hadn't considered watching it through a filter again, not after Jack had been so giddy to show him what lay beyond his bars.

There was no ice in the distance. No dripping fixtures. No whines from passing Nightmares, or distant rumbles from Toothless. Nothing to feel, nothing to measure except the hollow sets of fearling eyes, sleepy and shapeless within the murk.

Over time there were new specks of light popping up around him, yellow discs of wispy faces that blinked and whispered. Hiccup counted eyes instead of seconds and kept track on his fingers until he ran out of hands.

Toothless was asleep. He had to still be asleep. Four hundred and twenty three fearling eyes later, he still had to be asleep, and Hiccup was cold from his chest to the tips of his fingers.

He still couldn't feel Jack.

He counted grooves on the floor. Traced the notches in his fake leg. The metal always felt a few degrees cooler than his skin, and cooler still was the steel beneath his bare foot. Soon enough his head began to feel empty, as light and shapeless as the clouds. Maybe he was flying. Maybe he was dreaming. Maybe he had fallen asleep. It made as much sense as anything -- he could never tell time when he was asleep, and when he woke up things were always different.

He couldn't feel anything.

Hiccup closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, there was a clicking on the air, a different sound than the usual brittle snap of fearling teeth. " _Tsk, tsk...._ "

Then a hiss of shadow shifting, solidifying, and the graceful pad of another's feet behind him.

Hiccup didn't turn around. He wasn't ordered to. He stared tensely at the bars in front of him, listening to the slow thud of footsteps circling. The looming figure that appeared out of the corner of his right eye was fully upright with his hands clasped leisurely behind his back.

"Did the Canary miss his cage?" Pitch crooned sweetly.

This wasn't his cage. His cage had a hole in the top, with misshapen metal that looked twisted and scorched. And the scratches and faults in the aged surface were in the wrong spots. His cage had a tiny notch in the bar just below where the seam of the door lay, and a floor he had laid himself across too many times not to recognize intimately, and a--

"Show me your leg."

....right. Yes. Okay.

Hiccup watched his legs part for the Nightmare King with the same hollow thoughtlessness that he watched his nightmares unfold.

The motion was fluid, easy, a kind of seduction he had only just started to understand had a separate effect on Jack than the untidy way he usually rushed to offer himself. The effect on Pitch was more subtle. He tilted his head as if Hiccup were a particularly interesting display of art, his eyes scanning over every freckle and scar with a lazy entitlement that suggested the performance was being evaluated.

"....your _leg._ " He repeated at last. Each syllable was enunciated clearly, though the amusement still lingered through the touch of steel. "I only asked for the one."

A far-away memory skimmed coldly to the surface. He thought he might be shaking. At the very least, his knees were trembling when the right leg folded itself reluctantly inward, and as the left stretched itself out.

"There we are." The words came in an indulgent purr as Pitch knelt to place a hand over the seam where flesh turned to metal.

 _Please_ , Hiccup thought suddenly.

"My Fearling Prince was right, I think. It's not very pretty after all..."

"Please." He hadn't meant to interrupt. " _Please--_ " He had no idea where this was coming from. His voice sounded brittle, like chips of splintered wood. They scratched and cut at the inside of his throat as he spoke. The Nightmare King flattened his hand, stroked it downward to where the screw attached the metal foot to its post.

"Please, what?"

"I....I don't know..." His vision was beginning to liquefy, blotting Pitch's steady golden gaze. " _Please_ , I'm, I'm _sorry_ \--"

"Sorry, for....?"

"I don't _know_...!"

Something was being done to his leg - Hiccup couldn't follow the process. He couldn't look. He thought he must be dreaming still, or that he had dreamed something like this before, but this was terror and it was primal and it was all he could do to try to think of Toothless, sweet, loyal Toothless in make-believe at his side.

There was the a drip in weight as the prosthetic was removed and gently set aside.

And then Pitch's hand appeared at his opposite knee and stroked in much the same way--

Hiccup couldn't stop the terrified sob that tore from him. He could hear himself gasping through the static: helpless, ugly sounds that tore through the air and heaved forcefully through his chest. It did no good to imagine Toothless anymore; Toothless wasn't here.

"Come now, child." The Nightmare King's voice was a velvet hush. That hand never left his right leg, drawing a pensive line around the same middle-point that his left had ended. The scythe of his smile was as white as his eyes. "What are you so _afraid_ of?"

Hiccup shook his head. His mind felt too full of panic, too empty of Toothless. A phrase popped hysterically into his mind -- _'catch me'_ \-- and soon that was all he could think, over and over, as loud and panicked as the screams of the Above men.

"I've not come to clip your wings."

_\--catch me, catch me, catch me--_

Pitch's eyes slid closed, lips slightly parted. Hiccup was drowning, and the Nightmare King was drinking him from the air. And then his hand eased up, finger by finger like a lover's parting caress, and Hiccup felt his right leg finally, _thankfully_ released, and left leg being scooped up again, lifted to rest against a stony knee.

"Not very pretty, no." he said again. A long, gray finger slid beneath Hiccup's chin, angling it upward to align their eyes. "And we can do better, can't we?"

A question. An answer. He forced a watery, tight-lipped nod. The skeletal finger slipped from his jaw to brush away a stray droplet that crawled down his cheek. There was a hiss of nightmare sand beneath them, but Pitch's eyes were locked on his, and Hiccup couldn't look away now even if he tried.

His left leg felt no different through whatever process Pitch was putting it through. His touch crept down, past the flesh and into the space where the prosthetic once was, and Hiccup only dared to glance down when Pitch saw fit to look himself.

The sight that greeted him stole the breath from his lungs.

There was a foot there. But it couldn't _possibly_ be his. This was as black as tar, speckled with flecks of silver and violet. The nightmare sand was settling, smoothing itself over into tiny details: the shape of an ankle, individual toes. Tendrils of shadow twisted and curled around the outline, weaving themselves through languidly like threads guided by invisible needles. They darkened the phantom limb stripe by stripe, then folded themselves up over the flesh stump, higher and higher until they had passed over over his knee, his thigh. Hiccup watched in awe as the shade crawled up his lower half, swallowing first the entirety of one leg, then the other, and melding with his robe so perfectly that it was as if he had become a seamlessly shaded creature, whole.

"The shadow is yours." The Nightmare King directed, smoothing his hands over the shape of his new left foot. "The sand, mine. The shadow you can control if your will yourself to do so properly. Do you understand?"

He didn't, not entirely, but he forced himself to nod once more. The liquid on his face had stopped, drying fast against his tepid cheeks.

"Good. Try to move it."

Hiccup willed his toes to curl and saw them twitch only faintly. A few more attempts earned a proper flex. Pitch's finger traced an idle line up his calf as he worked, watching as he attempted to rotate his ankle -- sluggish, yes, but it was easier by the second. The faint taste of the Nightmare King's silent praise urged him steadily on.

"You can stand, now."

Hiccup tried to stretch his toes apart separately, marveling at the natural way they curled in. It was dulled, but if he concentrated enough, he thought he could actually _feel_ the limb as if it were an extension of himself resting against Pitch's lap. At the Nightmare King's gesture, he steadied his hands beneath him, wriggled himself back and pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. It took some flailing and waving of his hands, but he didn't fall. When he managed to straighten entirely, Pitch unfolded himself from his perch and loomed above him like a great towering God.

Standing on the new leg felt downright bizarre. He remained favoring his right side, but now the left seemed almost _softened_ , like he was balancing on dead nerves. The idea of taking a step was impossible....but then Pitch opened his arms, and the gesture was obvious, _come here._

Biting down his apprehension, Hiccup stretched out the shadow-leg, placed his weight blindly on top of it, and found it holding. The step maneuvered him into the cage of Pitch's open palms, which shifted to slide over his forearms and up to his shoulders, as if taking inventory of the small space he took up within his confinements.

"....very good...."

"Thank you...." Hiccup breathed, astonished. And then again, as the reality of what was happening hit him -- the Nightmare King had given him a new leg, a gesture he had never even fathomed was possible, let alone worth the effort on his behalf - it spilled from him in slavish adoration; "...t- _thank_ you....!"

"...ah...."

The hand shifted from his shoulder to his hair, combing through the sweat-dampened locks leisurely. Drawing him closer. Hiccup curled himself gratefully into the Nightmare King's embrace.

"You like it, do you?" Pitch muttered kindly against his crown.

Hiccup could not even begin to imagine what he could have done to earn such a love.

" _Yes._ " he relinquished in awe.

"Then come." The hand curved to close around his shoulders, sweeping him towards the barred door in one fluid motion. "You've better uses for it than sitting in cages."

\------

Toothless needed adjusting, too, but he was not approached alone. Hiccup did his best to untie the ropes that fastened the left stirrup in place, and Pitch dismantled and re-fastened and filled in the gaps with nightmare sand. He did not stay close, nor did he stay long. Once Toothless was fitted, he spared an indulgent smile and a long, thoughtful look over Hiccup's newly fixed body before vanishing neatly into shadow.

The metal bar that usually clicked in place around his prosthetic foot was fully replaced with a wispy-looking replica. The strap was wider, as delicate looking as the silk strands of a Nightmare's mane, and squeezed snugly around his instep when he slotted his foot into place at Toothless' side. It was a perfect fit, even better than the one he'd begun to grow used to.

Toothless wasn't quite so fond. Distrust had been clear in his expression when Pitch was sighted, and it took a long while of inspecting Hiccup for him to decide that the sand replica was harmless, let alone good. The adjustment on his own harness caused some fretting, but it worried him less so. Hiccup could feel the discord stirring within his mighty heart, that sense of missing something.

And it was funny, in a way, because now they weren't missing anything at all. If he looked down at himself, and both his legs cloaked in skin-tight black, it was as if he had never lost that part of himself in the first place. He couldn't even spot the seam where the flesh ended and Pitch's sand began. The stunted feeling he could get used to, he was sure. Soon enough he might not even remember it was there.

After so many nights waking up to the sight of a mangled limb, the thought of forgetting his own defect was astounding.

For Toothless, it was just confusing. He couldn't seem to make up his mind about where his eyes were supposed to rest; Hiccup's leg, or Hiccup's face. The air was full of rumbling huffs, moody sighs, claws pawing uncertainly at stone. Hiccup's hands appeared, small and gray where they cupped around Toothless' strong face. "You're gonna love this," he promised, and looked straight into those green-gold eyes as he spoke.

Toothless' gaze flattened, unamused. An indignant once-over was given, from his chin down to his perfect, newly matched feet. Hiccup wiggled his toes hopefully, and Toothless tapped his claws in reply -- "There you go, see?" Hiccup laughed. "It's good, bud."

It _was_ good....but good or bad didn't seem to be the problem. By his dragon's fragmented attention, and that pull at his heart, in his center where Toothless was firmly at home, he knew that there was more to it than that....

...what, exactly? Hiccup wondered.

But then, a voice upon the air, as sharp and strong as cracking ice, distracted him from his thoughts. "Ooooh...... _fancy!_ "

Hiccup swiveled to find the source. And there, high above him and perched with animal grace against a hanging cage, was his Prince. The soles of his feet were balanced against the bars, the crook of his staff looped around one for balance. He was perfectly inhuman with his head tilted curiously and frost thickening where his bare skin touched, while the cage itself looked positively frigid, half-white and covered in glittering ferns.

"What's up with the lizard?" Jack lifted his chin.

"N-nothing." he faltered. Toothless grumbled back sourly, as if to underline the statement. "Nothing-- he, ah....he's not fond of change." Hiccup gave a half smile, flattening his hand over Toothless' scales, and gave in as his dragon nudged his cheek, croaking a note of amusement. "Am I right, Toothless?" he mumbled, turning into his friend's advances with easy affection. "Right...? You don't like surprises, do you bud?"

"What's not to like?" Jack scoffed. "Call me old-fashioned, but I don't see what's so fun about walking around with a chunk of you ripped off..." There was a loud screech of rusted metal as he pushed off the cage. Toothless' ears flicked, squinting irritably at the source. When Jack landed on the ground beside them, one leg already kicked in a lazy, pacing step, the dragon rolled a wing in an unconcerned stretch, nearly clipping his shoulder in the process.

Jack snickered and fixed his sights low.

"...look at you..." he muttered under his breath. "....I told you he loved you. It's been, what, five years? And he's already spoiling you rotten. Pitch never gave _me_ any free limbs..."

Hiccup's mouth quirked. The Fearling Prince cackled and stretched out a foot pointedly to demonstrate. "It's a joke get it?" he teased. "I already _got_ all ten of my toes."

"I..." Hiccup began, smiling crookedly. And then; "...yes." Something seemed _off_ in the air. Not _bad_ , but just...off. As if there was an unfinished note hanging between them, but the words were all blurry, scrambled and re-scrambled into something incomprehensible.

"You're still dragging on one side." A hard _snap_ of his fingers-- "That's right! You're not good with nightmare sand, are you? I'm no Pitch, but I've got a _bit_ of a grip on it--"

Another _snap_ , and Hiccup felt his left leg give a violent jerk. It was as if an invisible hand had fixed itself around his ankle and pulled it sharply back. He stumbled with a loud, undignified yelp, flailing to right himself.

Both the Prince and Toothless moved very suddenly and with astonishing speed. It was premeditation that caused Jack to reach him first. His arms closed around his waist, catching him before he could lose balance entirely and tugging their bodies flush together at the hip.

" _There_ we go." he purred.

Toothless nudged his head roughly between them and _growled._ Hiccup could feel his heart going very fast, his own surprise combined with Toothless', and the dragon's sense of insulted fury rattling through him in a bizarre aftershock. It was almost like drinking someone else's fear, the way his friend's vexation lay alien and impossible to understand within his stomach. Jack was only playing, but Toothless was bristling, his fangs very clearly on display. _It's fine_ , Hiccup willed him to understand, and a hand reached out and stroked the smooth, scaled cheek. Toothless leaned into his touch automatically, then quickly flicked his head away, looking at Jack with such rapt attention that it was as if he expected something to shatter. 

Jack, if anything, only seemed smug about it. One hand encircled more firmly over Hiccup's midsection, holding them together in a snug fit while the other brushed back his hair tenderly, then caught his chin between two fingers.

"What's wrong, dollface? You're shaking like a leaf."

"It's okay." Hiccup said, more so to Toothless than Jack. "Everything's okay." And then; "Minor faults in balance...s-something to get used to. I've got two left feet anyway."

" _Hah_ ," Jack sputtered. And then louder, until he was hitching with the force of his giggling. "...there it is! _There's_ that deadpan. I missed you talking!" He leaned in suddenly and captured their open mouths together, swallowing Hiccup's startled noise before it could form completely and turning it to a pleasured sigh. When he pulled back, Hiccup's lips were already parted, leaning in for more. Jack nuzzled their cheeks together once before tucking his face into the hollow of Hiccup's throat like a burrowing child. His next words were uttered out in a chill fog that ghosted over the bruises there.

"I'm so glad you're _back._ "

That tone was so beautiful. So forgiving. A solemn and frightful question lay unspoken between them, but perhaps he didn't need the answer after all. He could feel Jack's happiness in the air, feel the barely contained energy coursing through him, as if he were a broiling storm trapped within a boy's body, turning from the inside out.

He was aware of a space within him. A need for something. Air, clouds....whatever it was, Jack seemed to sense it, too. "It's nap time." he muttered. "For the Night Fury."

Hiccup hesitated.

"Go on."

"Toothless." he said, and Toothless gave him a hollow, hollow look. "Go on," Hiccup said, and Jack was happy, and he was happy, so he smiled serenely and with all of his heart. He didn't want to drug him, as Jack seemed to be implying. He wouldn't, anyway -- there was no need. Toothless would understand. "Go on," Hiccup said again, a soft and reassuring purr. "I'll join you in a minute."

Jack's hand inched lower, rubbing over the firm curve of his backside. Toothless nipped at the air for a moment, searching for fear -- _anyone's_ fear -- and Hiccup knew, suddenly, that for whatever reason, he expected to taste Hiccup's.

He didn't, of course.

Hiccup wasn't scared.

The dragon purred softly, gave them a wilting, tired look, and shook out his head and wings. Hiccup watched him slink away with the air of a world-weary parent. Jack waited until he had gone into the shadow, silent and mostly still besides the faintest squeeze of his hand. When he spoke again, his tone was low and sweet: "What do you want, Hic...?"

Hiccup stared into the darkness beyond them. The side of his head tingled, a dull and persistent ache from where Jack had struck it against the stone floor.

"What do _you_ want?" he whispered back. 

Lips stretched into a smile against his throat. And then he pulled back, and his beautiful face was all he could see. The touch of his hands was all he could feel.

"I love you." Jack promised, and pushed him to his knees.

\-----

Pitch said, if he was good, he could ride Toothless outside of the Nightmare Realm, in the star-studded velvet of the midnight sky where there was enough space to sour, enough oxygen to toss fire petals into the audience of clouds, and so much of Toothless' pure, perfect joy burning through his veins that Hiccup could free-fall from a hundred feet in the air and never fear that Toothless would fail to keep him from hitting the ground.

So Hiccup was good. And Jack loved him with so much passion and fervor that Hiccup felt he was held in the arms of a hurricane. Pitch's affection, that once-believed believed dull and decaying thing that Jack promised to him under the moon, remained a steady and unwavering current beneath him that the Prince called over and over again ' _love_ ' until Hiccup could not help but think it true. When he stepped on his left side, his leg did not crumble. When he flew on Toothless's back, they remained perfectly joined at the stirrup.

What else could that be but love?

Time passed as a dream, measurable by the spells of sleep, the blessings of Jack's kisses, and the lovely nights beneath the moon's face when Hiccup tried to reach up and up to touch the sky. And all the while there was the constant fixed points of Toothless' purr, Toothless' heart, Toothless' eyes peering worriedly into his whenever he woke in fits, passing back to him the reflection of his own unbroken self until the lingering dregs of fear became safe and meaningless again.

He learned tastes of every kind. Gold-turned-black dreams of swallowing silver, of missing limbs (how his head hurt, and his leg tingled, that memory of fire,) dreams of bodies with dragon's fang skewered through, or dragon bodies impaled with knives ('I didn't mean to,' sobbed a man in his sleep, and Pitch had smiled and twisted his fingers until the mass of nightmare sand was enough to swallow him whole.) There were dreaming designs of fire and ice, empty beds that were meant to be full and beds full of strangers that were meant to be empty. Hiccup drank when he could. Watched when he couldn't. Sucking his fingers became a comforting habit, something to take his mind away from the hunger when it began to gnaw at his insides again.

That was the thing about hunger, he found. Sometimes you just didn't know you were hungry until you got the next taste. And then it happened all over again, the withdrawal, the pains. The need to fill his mouth with something, anything, to keep his tongue busy and his stomach full. Jack was happy to provide, to overfill him until he was numb and spent and thoroughly remade, and between turns he always chanted into his ear, ' _you're good, you're so good._ '

It was a feeding of it's own, that praise.

Hiccup gorged himself on it.

For some time in the world of Above, there were reoccurring nightmares of the man with the ram horns. Hiccup saw them repeatedly over the head of his father, the brother of the Chief. He dreamed of his son, born again in black sand and unraveling slowly from the wounds at his throat. Sometimes there was a person over him, squeezing him by the neck until he stopped moving. The shape of the person changed from week to week - one night it was a man, the other a woman. Sometimes the figure attacking wore Viking horns, other times it wore capes, and others still carried axes or swords or came fitted with wartime declarations from foreign lands and motivations Hiccup could not understand.

Sometimes they were cold figures, jagged and dripping as if sculpted from ice. _Reputation_ was what Jack called those. He heard the whispers from the ones that woke in the thralls between terrors, _frost giants_ , they'd say, or _the deathly cold._ Sometimes they said _Jokul Frosti_ , and Jack would wait until they tore from their sheets sweating and gasping in the grip of night terrors, to allow a second's glimpse of his face.

Hiccup came across the blonde woman once -- still his favorite, and perhaps always so -- who cried in her sleep, ' _Hiccup._ ' And again, louder, ' _Hiccup!_ ' until Jack had announced that they had taken their fill and lead him with a satisfied grin from her room.

He whispered it into her ear on other nights -- ' _Hiccup_ ' -- and those were nights when neither of them ever had to touch the golden sand to turn it black. It rotted on its own, spurred on by whatever thread she had come to understand his name by.

There was one visit where he watched, in a beautiful and spacious room they had only visited once, Jack pulling his favorite trick in which he wore shadow like new skin. This time it was a very small shadow, gangly and straw-haired, missing its left leg just below the knee. The man asleep in his bed was large and grand and very old, with graying hair in an untamable beard that was once the color of fire.

Jack cried with a mockery of his voice, _listen, please, for once in your life, just listen to me_ , and in his sleep the man sobbed back, _Odin_ , and _no_ , and _I'm sorry, so sorry, so very, very sorry._

Hiccup had watched until his vision turned to water, and his breath became short and clipped and frayed at the edges, and then Jack had taken him outside where he had wailed long and hard, unable to stop the moisture that dripped steadily down his cheeks -- and it was _strange_ , so strange, and why was he leaking like that...?

On and on it continued, until Pitch fetched Toothless, and then they were in the sky where the rush of wind dried up the salt on his cheeks, and Hiccup thought, _wow_ , and laughed, " _amazing!_ " and was pathetically grateful to be loved enough that he was granted such a privilege.

He had many ways to show his gratitude. And he did.

Again and again, he did.

They were spotted now and again. Often Pitch tangled nightmare sand above their heads and watched them fall. Sometimes Jack plucked them up, tossed them back in their beds. Other nights he just left them there, sprawled across the floor like creatures long gone.

The whispers became blacker: _monster, ghost._

One woman screamed, and Jack silenced her with the sharp end of his staff. Red bubbled up from where he forced the point down through her skin. Out like a light. Sleeping. The stars in her eyes were very bright, but they burned out so quickly that Hiccup hardly had time to watch them fade.

The whispers became blacker still: _killer, curse._

(Hiccup whispered to him too, sweetly into the shell of his ear as Jack took icy shelter in the warmth of his thighs: _master, savior, prince._ )

There was a night where he did not eat at all, and Jack returned again and again to the bed of the brother of the Chief. And Pitch had watched the doors, and nodded, and said, _'are you hungry?'_ and then, _'very hungry?'_ , and finally, ' _you are capable of more, I think.'_ He watched Jack close the doors, and rouse the man awake with the sound of his wife's gurgling voice, and all the while Hiccup stood where he was told to stand, at the corner of his bed where Pitch could observe him clearly from the dark.

He had not expected him to wake so suddenly. But by the time his eyes had opened, Jack had sealed bands of shadow over his wrists, his ankles, and he was held too tight for his initial thrashing to do any good.

His eyes met Hiccup's, and there was a light in them, burning strong and overflowing with fear. Hiccup had never looked for so long into one of the Above men's eyes. He wanted to hide, but Jack had said, _stay_ , and he wanted to freeze, but Pitch had said, _go on._

The man opened his mouth and took a breath to shout. Hiccup threw his hands in up in a hurry and babbled over him -- "No, no, nononono, _stop_ \--" It all came out in a rush, the syllables tripping and tangling over each other in their haste. "Don't do that -- it's, it's okay! I'm not gonna hurt you--"

Shadow crawled over his chin, the black beard shot through with gray, and threatened to gag his soundlessly screaming mouth.

"It's okay. It's okay--" His hands came down, hovered over his face, and Hiccup could feel his terror. Terror, and something else. Reputation. Recognition. It was as if he knew his face.

" _Hiccup_ ," he rasped.

And Hiccup said, "I'm here. I'm here...."

Pitch was watching him very closely. His hands, most of all. He called his power 'paralysis,' and Hiccup understood what that meant. It meant stillness, and calm. It meant sleeping soundly. It meant peace. Hiccup pressed his hands to the man's heaving chest, trembling with his need to take his terror away.

It was the thing with hunger. It was always the thing with hunger. He never knew he was hungry until he was _hungry_ , and gods, he was. He was so, _so_ , hungry.

The man tried again to struggle, but his movements were sluggish and weak. "There you go," Hiccup rambled on, "Relax...you're safe..." He could hear his heart beating fast in his ears. _Safe, safe,_ it had such a meaning to him. He wished this stranger could understand it as well as he did. "Everything's going to be alright...."

"Gods, no," croaked the man. His voice came out reedy, strained. Hiccup brushed his hair back from his forehead with trembling fingers, a gesture he himself found comfort in. It was difficult to tell his effect on the man. The fear was like a bad dream, like seeing a ghost, and every sorrowful thought of missing family and ravenous seas seemed to have vanished entirely in the spell of it.

"'m gonna help you, okay?" he swore, and it was almost as if Pitch and Jack had vanished entirely. "I'm helping you, I promise...it's nothing. It's only fear."

_Only fear._

"What -- what's something you like...? Think of something you like..." A memory popped into his head - gold dreamsand, a boat. "Sailing?" the word came naturally, forming itself unexpectedly on his tongue. The only indication that he was correct was the spark of recognition that lit up the man's terrified face.

"Sailing, that's it!" Hiccup encouraged him. "That's good! Think of sailing...."

"You can't--" the man gasped. The paralysis was setting in. The way he moved his lips, it was as if he was struggling to form the words. " _Devil_ , you can't, can't _be_ \--"

"And the sea." Hiccup continued gently. "And the, the wind in your hair, the salt." There was saliva gathering in his mouth, an empty pit in the very center of his stomach. He thought he had taken his fill when Jack put this man's son to sleep, or had understood his terror when he had seen Jack draw it out of him time and time again. Now he knew what the difference was. Being the focal point, the only one drawing fear from him, and so closely, so _intimately_ , it was a direct feeding that seemed to pour energy back into his tired bones. The man shook his head once, twice, fear spilling in a frothing rush from his eyes and his mouth and his heaving chest, and Hiccup shushed him and soothed him and felt that empty pit within him slowly fill to the brim.

His hand circled over once, twice, tracing the outline of his heart. It was skipping beneath him in uneven and rapidly weakening beats. Hiccup thought of falling through fire, black wings in the distance, a hand on his own chest, pushing through. His fingers seemed to darken with the memory.

"Can't," the man said again. "Can't, can't..." His fingers were twitching, closing and flexing as if trying to will a weapon into his hands. To fight. His pride was a worn and weary thing, but still fierce, still strong.

"Sssh." The dark fingers rested against his skin, just enough to push the suggestion in. _Sleep_ , Hiccup thought, _please be still_. Paralysis soaked him to the bone, relaxing his muscles, dragging in deep until his breathing began to slow.

His heartbeat, even slower.

"....a..h...."

"Sssh...."

"...."

"That's it, it's okay, it's okay..."

There was only a little of that beautiful light left in his eyes, and it was fading fast. His fear was so heady -- Hiccup's mind sorted itself through, supplying a name to the experience. Green apples, he thought out of the blue, so tart that they made your mouth tingle. And overripe blackberries, the kind that burst in your mouth when you chewed. The flavor stayed long after the pulse became a crawl, slower and slower until it was ready to stop entirely. He drew his fingers away, but the stillness of his touch stayed inside, calming the trembling mouth and sliding the heavy eyes gently shut.

Beneath Jack's bindings, his hands went slack.

No dreamsand came to greet him. He was as perfectly motionless, as pale as his son had been. Very deep under, then. Hiccup released him slowly, patting his hair back one more time in a silent thank-you, and silently hoped that where ever he was, he was dreaming in gold.

The Nightmare King crossed silently to his right, the Fearling Prince on his left. Hiccup straightened slowly and with a grace he hadn't meant to employ. He understood, distantly and with a finality that calmed him, exactly why Jack basked in fear that way that he did. It made him feel stronger, less like a shadow and more like a real thing. He thought he might be real now, standing there, looking down at the peaceful quiet of the slumbering stranger at his feet. Not just a shade, but _real_ , with his masters there to want him, and fear there to staple his wilting insides into one piece.

Pitch's hand curved over the nape of his neck, Jack's fitting with natural ease into the small of his back. And inside, he was so complete. So sated. He hadn't known it was possible to feel so completely alive.

 _Full to bursting_ , just as Jack had promised.

"Well?" Pitch prompted. His fingers rested lazily, cupping the side of his throat so that his cracked nails lay perfectly within the ring of bruises Jack's teeth had made. Hiccup opened his mouth and closed it once, savoring the taste as it lingered, ripe and sweet and filed away into some secret, greedy compartment beneath his tongue.

"Delicious." he said.

\-----

( _Stop._ )

\------

That night, Hiccup dreamed of joy.

He was on his back, and Jack's hands were around his throat, and in this vision Hiccup was watching it all out of body and from a distance. Watching Jack's fingers squeeze and let up, squeeze and let up, and the twitch of his hips working between his spread legs. His shoulders and back were obscuring his expression, so Hiccup drew himself to stand and padded over through the dreamspace, sat himself down beside his head and watched the nightmare-replica of his own face tremble and gape.

Sure enough, when he looked closely, he found a light buried within the acid drops of his eyes, just as he had with the ram-horned man and his father. They were two perfect, far-away stars that shone and glittered whenever he sucked in another breath of air. But in his dream, these stars faded slowly. They were bright at first, brilliantly so, but one gasp of air later they were dimmer, and the next even dimmer, and then finally Jack was mewling and hissing and coming deep inside him and Hiccup was watching that dying candle light in his eyes flicker and writhe through the pinch of white fingers until it was finally and firmly snuffed out.

He watched Jack pull out and rise, naked, to stand above his body. His grin was a bright, airy loop of a thing laying crooked on his face as if hanging from fixed nails. Hiccup felt love in his heart and liquid on his face and smoke pouring from his eyes were the candles had been extinguished. It drifted from his cheeks and above his head in white-gray plumes, gathering in a cloud of drifting smog at the ceiling of his old cage.

He woke trembling in Toothless's wing, feeling very much like he had fallen from a far height.

As always, when waking in the Nightmare Realm, it took a minute to remember exactly where he was.

When the pieces clicked back together, Hiccup took inventory. He felt soaked to the bone. Wetness inside him, in the pounding of his own blood crawling through his veins. Wetness beneath him, in the sticky pool of sweat and shadow and the traces that Jack left behind. A swipe of his fingers over the granite floor turned up nothing, no chalky human outline for him to fit himself into. No cracked and bleeding insides. No sea of red.

And he thought, inexplicably, _did I fall? I could have sworn I fell...._

But it was impossible; Toothless was here. Toothless caught him.

 _Go back to sleep_ , whispered a buzz in the back of his brain.

Hiccup tucked himself back into his nest of shadow and secured Toothless' leathery wing more firmly around his shoulders. His head fit perfectly against his dragon's breast, a special bed meant just for him. He could hear the song of his heartbeat magnified against his ear, a drum to the din of the Nightmare Realm that soothed his restless pulse and evened the tangles of his catching breath.

...and he had a feeling he had _dreamt_ something just now, something chilling and strange and _important_ , but one way or another he couldn't seem to recall exactly what that was.

Hiccup closed his eyes and let himself fall, wrapped in Toothless' indestructible embrace. He did not hit the ground, and he did not dream.


End file.
